 Ladies and gentlemen, can I ask you all to rise please for her Royal Highness, Crown Princess Victoria. Thank you so much. Your Royal Highness, Excellencies, Minister Ericsson, Miss Clark, ladies and gentlemen. A really warm welcome to SEI and this seminar and policy dialogue today. Welcome to everyone in this quite small and intimate room and also to everyone joining online through the webcast. Stockholm Environment Institute is delighted to co-host this event with the newly opened Embassy of New Zealand and Ambassador Andrew Jenks. So why are we having this policy dialogue today? Well, one reason obviously is that we have very prominent international guests visiting Stockholm, sharing insights and wisdom. But also we feel that momentum is building to translate rhetoric into action regarding climate and SDGs. We all know that we have no more than 10 or 12 years to achieve a really deep and broad climate transition across societies in a way that's also compatible or even synergistic with all the 17 sustainable development goals. And I think the UN Secretary General used the words last week when calling upon governments to prepare for the climate summit in September. That's please come with plans, not speeches. So that's what we want to explore with you today. How do we translate words into action, targets into implementation, into measures. And of course from SEI we are very keen to hear how can we be relevant in this work through our science, our tools, our policy advice. So we're very pleased to have Royal Highness with us today. You've been raising the profile of these issues internationally and in Sweden in your role as a UN advocate for the sustainable development goals and your personal commitment. Also very pleased to have of course a special guest Helen Clark, one of our most experienced and inspirational international leaders. As you all know, she was Prime Minister of New Zealand almost 10 years and then followed by eight years as leading the UN Development Program. And we are delighted that Minister Peter Ericsson could join us, New Minister for International Development Cooperation, and you will give some opening remarks very soon. And of course everyone in the audience, there are a lot of climate and sustainability champions here in your different roles. Working for the government, SIDA, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working in research, civil society, media and so on, my esteemed SEI colleagues. So as I said, we're very pleased to co-host this event with you. From our side, we feel that Sweden and New Zealand are two countries that the rest of the world looks to for innovative policy solutions and ambitious climate policy. So we look forward to cooperating with you more. Ambassador. Thank you. Thank you also. Thank you also. Thank you for that kind, those kind words. Yes indeed, this isn't, you know, the most important issue perhaps confronting the world at the moment. And so we're very happy to participate in this event with you. You're all heinous. It's an honour and privilege that you're able to attend. Chair of SEI, Minister Ericsson, thank you very much for attending as well. And of course, right honourable Helen Clark. Just great that you were able to come to Stockholm at this time and that you're also able to participate. It's very kind of you to say to put New Zealand on the same level as Sweden on this issue. But to be honest, I think Sweden's a little bit ahead of us in terms of the way that you're dealing with the SDGs and in particular climate change on the implementation side. So in fact, as a new embassy here, as a new ambassador, this is an area where I think New Zealand can learn a lot from Sweden. And hopefully there's a bit you can learn from us too along the way. But one of the reasons we supported this gathering was to help continue this discussion, particularly around implementation. And I look forward to over the next few years to working further with Sweden and with SEI on these issues. I did want to take the opportunity to mention one other group of countries, which is the Pacific Island countries. For these countries, climate change is an existential issue. Some of these countries could be obliterated by the effects of climate change and will certainly have very severe economic implications for them and potentially cause mass migration and many other negative outcomes. Those islands are our neighbourhood. We have shared very strong ties with them. We actually have large Pacific Island communities in New Zealand, both indigenous and who have come from those islands already. So we take a great deal of interest in them. And on this issue, we are trying to work with them and to help them confront these same challenges. We appreciate that Sweden also through its CEDAS program based out of Bangkok is also assisting in that regard. But I am hoping that I can encourage Sweden to do even more in that region. And I would encourage Minister Ericsson and the Crown Princess to come and visit that region sometime and hear about those challenges firsthand. But thank you so much and I look forward to this discussion this afternoon. Thank you very much. So with that I would like to invite Minister Ericsson to give some opening remarks. Thank you very much. And thanks to the Embassy of New Zealand and SCI for this timely initiative and for inviting me to speak. Happy to see also Helen Clark with us today. Even though some time now has already passed since the terrible events in Christchurch, the memories of the events are still vivid in our minds. So our thoughts go to the victims' families, relatives and friends. The prompt and empathetic actions of the government of New Zealand is an inspiration to us all. The seminar today raised some interesting and important questions. How can the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda support each other? 2015 was a successful year for multilateralism. Four years have soon passed since the 2030 Agenda. There are this Abeba Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement were adopted. Now we need to speed up implementation, but also are the gold conflicts that hinders decision making. It is important to speed up investments rapidly for climate action now. Is this a problem for 2030 Agenda? Will it mean less investments against poverty and development? Are there risks for, for example, biodiversity if we go too fast for biofuels instead of oil, for example? Well, I would say, yes, we need to go a sustainable path and there are conflicts that we have to meet. But we also have to see that most of these conflicts disappear when you take a more long-term perspective. In the short term, we see conflicts, but everyone are winners in the long run. The problem is that people are not thinking in the long-term perspective. Some of us will not even live when the fruits of our investments will come. And humans and also politicians are short-sighted and climate change due to the use of fossil fuels is a completely new kind of challenge to mankind. The stakes are high and so are the costs of not acting on climate change. As stated in the invitation to this seminar, the latest IPCC report gives us the necessary evidence. We are looking forward to the global sustainable development report that will come in May. And we need sound and solid evidence-based science to guide the implementation. I would like to thank SEI for their work in this regard. The linkage between climate and sustainability is clear. Climate change threatens many of the ambitions expressed in the SDGs. Achieving targets on both climate change mitigation and adaption is critical to keeping the realization of the 2030 agenda as a whole within reach. Let me give just a few examples of the interlinkages between climate and the SDGs. The impacts of climate change often exacerbate poverty and inequality. It's essential that adaptation support and disaster preparedness give sufficient focus to populations whose lives and livelihoods are most vulnerable. I can give the example of Mozambique now. We saw just a few weeks before the disaster in Mozambique. I think SIDA took a decision that we have to give help on humanitarian aid on the draft in Mozambique. And then just a few weeks later this extremely disaster came and flooded big parts of the country. And it is still there for many places in meters of water above the ground. Another example of this is investments in more climate friendly infrastructures in cities are much more efficient than the old structures, both in terms of energy and costs. Having three consecutive summits in September this year on climate SDG and financing for development presents us with an excellent opportunity to highlight just these linkages we hope all parties will make. And let me now move to financing for climate and sustainable development. There are gains of investing in climate smart and sustainable solutions. And I'm convinced we together can mobilize the resources required to develop our societies into low carbon or even net zero carbon societies. The Swedish parliament adopted a new climate law in June 2017. We aim to reach net zero emissions by 2045 and 100% renewable energy production by 2040. Government has set up the fossil free Sweden partnership where business actors are presenting plans for how to reach these targets. So far 13 different road maps have been presented and this is including also steel cement and construction. And I should say that if we succeed in the task about steel steel without coal that is a project that could make a big difference for the whole globe. With the adoption of the Katowice rulebook which took last year we are now entering a new phase in the implementation of the Paris agreement. It's time to focus on raising ambitions. Responsibility starts at home by firmly integrating climate action in national budget and planning processes. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda provides the framework for national and international resource mobilization and should be fully utilized in the implementation of SDGs and countries. Nationally determined contributions. Allow me to in that context welcome the initiative by the World Bank Finland and Chile to establish a coalition of finance ministers for climate action. We look forward to the launch of the coalition in the margins of the spring meetings of the World Bank Bank Group and the IMF in Washington in the coming weeks. I think I stopped there now since we have a little shortage of time also. Thank you very much. Minister thank you very much. Your Royal Highness Excellencies ladies and gentlemen my name is Robert Watt. I am the communications director here at SEI and I've got the honor of being your moderator today. And I'm going to introduce you to three of SEI's researchers who will provide snapshots of the work that we do on SDGs. It's a snapshot because you can quite easily say that pretty much all the work that SEI is doing is connected in some way to one or very often more than one of the SDGs. Overall our objective is to turn what is a very ambitious 2030 agenda into actionable policies and effective practice on the ground. So I'm going to hand over to Oliver. Oliver do come up. Oliver is going to take us to Zambia and tell us a little bit about what it's like on the ground when looking into the connection between energy and gender. Jumping. Good afternoon. Very happy to give you just as Rob said a snapshot of some of the work we're doing on looking at gender dimensions of energy transitions. And we know that the energy transition is a core part of addressing climate change mitigation and this is a complex long term undertaking to transition energy systems. And it's not clear that the system that we may go to which may be greener and cleaner will necessarily be more equal or just or inclusive. And so we've started to look at what might be some of the gender implications and other implications on marginalized communities when it comes to energy transitions. And as Rob said I'd like to take you to Zambia to just highlight one aspect of the work we're doing. Looking at the introduction of a solar mini grid in rural Zambia in a town called Mpanta. You can imagine this very rural fishing community on the shores of Lake Banguelu in northern Zambia. Most of the 500 households there are engaged in subsistence agriculture and fishing. And in about 2011 they established a solar mini grid 60 kilowatts so that was trying to provide lighting and powering small appliances and charging mobile phones to about 400 450 households. So we wanted to know how much the introduction of this mini grid which was aimed to really change the the energy system and within the community. What would be the effect on on men and women within that community. This was the framework we used and this is called the energy cultures framework actually originated from University of Otago. Some researchers there in New Zealand and they understood the energy system as this complex interaction between material culture. That might that's the kind of physical infrastructure alongside energy practices how we actually use consumer produce and consume energy and social norms that determine who gets to use what types of energy. And of course you have various external influences that could be government policy or or other things that affect that energy culture. So by bringing in a new material culture that is the mini grid. What is that doing to energy behavior and energy culture within that community. And our analysis found that energy transitions are not gender neutral. The benefits of introducing a new energy technology is not necessarily evenly distributed. And two aspects I'll highlight is that these may not change they may not change gendered spaces. And the example I'll give you is that in this community the businesses were tended to be owned by men and they were physical structures. The women who had were engaging in kind of income generation activities were typically selling fruit and veg underneath a tree. Whilst they had to go about their their other responsibilities of caring for the home collecting water collecting firewood and electricity comes to physical structures. So it was the men who were receiving the electricity connections to boost their businesses whereas the women didn't benefit in that way from the electricity. So they they kind of very differentiated impacts there. And the second is that electricity is often thought to be well we'll just have an electricity connection and everyone will use it in the same way. But there were very divergent aspirations between men and women in terms of what they wanted to use electricity for. The men often looking to power their new machines and maybe expand their businesses. But the women it was often looking at a way to reduce the burden of cooking with fuel wouldn't and have electric cooking. But the system was designed as if a blanket energy electricity access for all. And I think a lot to be taken from that that we have to think about designing services that meet differential needs. And so just to summarize I think the links between SDG 7 that's sustainable energy for all and affordable energy for all. And other SDGs such as gender equality are what I would call latent. They exist. But unless there are parallel interventions alongside say an energy intervention you won't actually accrue the benefits that you may get from. From having increased access to electricity or to energy. So that's just a snapshot on some of the work we've been doing. Thank you very much. A round of applause please. Taking us so quickly. You've got I've got 30 seconds so I'm going to ask you a quick question. So these parallel interventions. Have you got any sort of inkly about what they might look like? Yeah, certainly. I think it's these could be specific interventions around economic empowerment of women within a community so that that allows them to maybe harness the this new service that's that's been provided. And that's one one example. Kind of quite easy one maybe. Thank you very much Oliver. We're going to now move on to my colleague Lynn and Lynn is going to take us to a completely different part of the world. Lynn come up please and Lynn is going to tell us about the work that she and colleagues have been doing in Sri Lanka working across government departments and other stakeholders for the SDGs over to you. Yeah, so I'm very happy to be presenting experiences from Sri Lanka. As Rob was mentioning where we're currently underway pilot testing a new approach for increased coherence in policy making and implementation of the SDGs. And this project has been initiated by the Sri Lankan Ministry for Sustainable Development and Wildlife and the Ministry for National Policies and Economic Affairs. Together with us at SEI UNDP and a Sri Lankan think tank called the Center for Poverty Analysis. And the starting point for this project has been that in the language of the agenda 2030 it should be seen as one indivisible whole and the 17 goals and 169 targets should be implemented in an integrated way. But then to be able to do that in practice you need then to understand something about about how those goals and targets interact with each other. And so the question that we're exploring here is how can we understand those SDG interactions in a systematic and coherent way. And how can we use that understanding then to for policy prioritization and to to capitalize on potential synergies and mitigate or avoid potential trade-offs. And so the way that we have done this is that we've brought together an expert committee with interministerial representation that has selected 36 targets that are of particular relevance for Sri Lanka. And then in January this year we brought together around 30 participants from governments, UN bodies, academia and civil society to do an assessment of the SDG interactions. And the result of that assessment is what you see in this colorful matrix here. And so here we have, I'll try to walk you through it, it's the 36 targets times the 36 targets which then gives us roughly 1200 interactions. So a decent amount of work for those workshop participants. And to do the interactions here we used a seven point scale where dark blue represents strong potential synergy and dark red represents a strong potential trade-off. And so the participants would work their way through this row by row so target by target and they would answer the question if progress is made on say target 1.3 how does that affect progress and all the other targets. Can you just give an example? Of the targets? No, just like what happened? Yes, I think I will get to that. So a very good question, what can we learn from this type of matrix and this type of results? So first of all if we look at the overall pattern here, first finding is that there's a lot more synergies than trade-offs. There's a lot more blue than red in this picture which is great news. So there are indeed a lot of targets that do support each other and if we can capitalize on those synergies there's a lot to be gained for the achievement of the agenda. And then we can look at specific targets, so specific rows in this matrix. And we can identify targets that have a particularly strong positive influence on other targets with a lot of positive synergies. And this is the case for example for target 16.5 on corruption which is perhaps not very surprising and it also goes for the two targets that we have under goal 10 on reducing equality. So those targets can then be seen as a sort of accelerators or targets where a relatively small effort or investment could have a large impact. And then the third thing that we can also look for is individual targets that seem to have a lot of negative trade-offs, negative spillover effects on other targets. And that's the case for example here with target 11.1 which has improved access to housing and basic services. And the reason we see this is that in Sri Lanka a lot of urban development is largely unplanned at this stage. And so it has a lot of these negative impacts that are known for example water use and sustainable transport systems. And the policy implication of that is that those targets may also merit increased attention and how they're implemented to avoid some of these trade-offs. So if you zoom in here on climate we have two targets from goal 13 on climate change. And here we see that there is no red, so no negative influence from either of those two targets on any of the other targets. And the two climate targets are also standing out to sort of top-ranked targets in terms of their positive influence on other targets. And if we zoom in even more and look at the explanations that the participants have provided here for these scores, we see that the reason we see this pattern is because climate change measures are perceived as being very closely linked to vulnerability and risk reduction and agricultural productivity and food security and also water and energy for example. So the next stage for us here is going to be to look into what can be done then to draw on these synergies and mitigate these trade-offs and how we can turn that new knowledge into more coherent policy making and implementation. And so in conclusion I would say there are two key outcomes from this type of process where the first one is that it provides a basis for priority setting and also identifies potential cross sectoral collaborations. And a particular interest from our Sri Lankan government partners here is to identify accelerators or those sort of targets that have a lot of positive spillover effects on other targets. And then the second and final point is that I would say that the process itself can also be really valuable here in that it facilitates cross sectoral dialogue and it provides the participants with a shared view and a more holistic understanding of how the SDG targets interact with each other. Thank you. Thank you very much. The big diagram with lots of colours I think you did a super job at trying to make that understanding. Really well done, well done. Can I ask a very quick question to you? You've done this in Sri Lanka. Can it be done elsewhere or is this, you know... Yeah, definitely. I mean the method itself is very generic and we have applied it previously in Mongolia and we're currently also underway with doing a very similar setup to this in Colombia where our SEI Columbia office is leading that process also with very high government involvement and there they're looking at SDG interactions both at regional level and at national level and comparing whether they look the same when you look at different scales. Wonderful. Thank you very much, Lynn. Thank you. So there's lots more to look out for of our work to do with SDGs and interactions and supporting local and regional actors in their work. Now it's time to follow the money. Kevin, please come up. Kevin, another of my research colleagues here, Kevin is going to talk to us a little bit about finance and in particular related to small island developing states. Over to you, Kevin. Great. Thanks for that, Rob. I think this will be a little different than the last couple of presentations. I think I really appreciate how seeing what Oliver and Lynn have done with this, that we've all kind of taken different approaches to understanding how to synthesize some of our work. So a brief introduction to my role here at SEI. I think also mentioned that one of the things that we do as an institute is not only research, but it's research to bridge science and policy. So we have a lot of mandate as well to engage with different policy actors. In that capacity, I am our focal point to the Green Climate Fund. So I do a lot of thinking about the international climate finance architecture. I am not exactly a small island developing states expert. So I've taken the opportunity to review some of our work that we've done on SID specifically, and the latter half of the presentation I hope to use to think a bit about what this should mean for the broader finance architecture. So it's going to be kind of a shotgun approach at the very beginning, and then some thoughts at the end. So very quickly, some of the key questions I think are important to answer in the climate finance space, particularly in this context, is one, how much is there, which might sound very basic, but is actually quite contested and very important, and then how can it support sustainable development and enhance climate ambition. So first of all, how much climate finance is there? This, you would think, would be a very easy question to answer. As it happens, it is not at all. This is for a couple of reasons. In one sense, it's because climate finance is provided in a number of different forms via a number of different avenues. We have bilateral donors like Sweden providing funding to Mozambique, for example. But we also have multilateral development banks. We have things like climate funds like the GCF under the UNIFCCC. They could provide funding in terms of grants. They could provide it in terms of concessional loans, non-concessional loans, guarantees, bonds, equities, you name it. There's all sorts of stuff. And it's kind of unclear how we consider the way that these things relate to one another. We also have this sort of divide between private sector and public sector funding, whether or not private sector funding should, in theory, count. And in the case of climate finance, we need to be thinking about how climate related are these activities, are these mitigation activities, are they to help us adapt to the effects of a warming world? Are they development that have some climate co-benefits? So not at all clear exactly how much finance there is, generally speaking. This diagram here is something that the UNIFCCC Standing Committee on Finance produced last year during their biennial assessment report. They suggest that there are something like, I want to say, $400 billion or so dollars per year moving on this topic, much of which is renewable energy investment. The pot that I think I'm most concerned with is under the UNIFCCC as part of the Paris Agreement. Developed countries agreed to provide $100 billion per year to developing countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change. So for a lot of us, this $100 billion, which is currently about $30 billion in 2015 and $34 billion for 2016, this is the pot that most of us are concerned about in the UNIFCCC context. So this is kind of the subcategory of the larger finance landscape that we're especially interested in. Again, not exactly a clear picture. So one of the things that we're doing to try to figure out how do we go from this to something that's usable for policy makers. We at SEI have gone through and done a bespoke analysis of climate finance flows specifically within this category to all small island developing states. This is a graph from our Pacific paper specifically that essentially goes through and tries to trace how is funding moving from donor countries for what and to who. If you're a policy maker in a country, this is great, very pretty, good to show a slide of something like this at a talk, for example, but still not particularly useful. So what we've also done is we've done these short country profiles. These are not meant to be read by the people in this room at this moment. I realize they're quite small. But what they are is they are a couple of page summaries that basically describe how much funding is coming into your country, what sectors does it intend to go to, what is it for, what kind of form is the finance being provided in. So we've got these kind of country profiles that are meant to be used by decision makers in their everyday job to get a better sense of the finance that's flowing into our country so they can begin to answer questions about how this articulates with their priorities. So we've got these, for all of the countries, a couple of examples from our Pacific State. Recognizing that we have some colleagues from New Zealand in the room, I pulled for our Pacific SIDS specifically all of the countries where New Zealand is a major contributor. And what we can actually see in this case is that New Zealand is contributing quite a lot of money in terms of solar energy to the Cook Islands. There is a bit here in terms of energy generation and access for Samoa. New Zealand has one very small project on primary education for climate change going on in the Solomon Islands. As well as down here, energy access and generation, energy generation and access as well. And then again, solar energy. So what we see is that in most cases, the climate finance that's coming from New Zealand to other small island developing states in the Pacific tends to be very mitigation focused, which is interesting. Obviously mitigation is a really important element of this, but if you're somebody living in a small island developing state, you're also very concerned with adapting to climate change. You're not a major emitter yourself, but you know that there are going to be significant risks to you as a country because of climate change. We're concerned with food security. We're concerned with the salinity of our water resources. We're concerned with coastal erosion. So there's a lot of space to continue to invest in those sorts of activities. So this is a little bit about the landscape generally speaking. But what I was asked to speak to today is how exactly can climate finance be useful for enhancing ambition. So this is the part where we move from me summarizing the excellent work of my colleagues here at SCI to kind of spitballing on some of the policy ideas that I've been talking with the GCF and other actors about. So one thing that I'd like to briefly say about this is that the term enhancing climate ambition is actually quite specific in terms of UN language. This is something that comes out of the Paris Agreement. And the idea behind this is that every five years countries, parties to the Paris Agreement are supposed to submit what was already referred to earlier, the nationally determined contributions. So these are plans that countries put forward to say this is what we're going to do. We promise we're going to work on this and then it goes into the global stock take to then measure collective progress. And every five years when new submissions are made we're supposed to enhance ambition and do more. This tends to be interpreted in the mitigation context, but again in small and developing states where adaptation is a principal concern it's less clear how enhancing climate ambition should and could relate to those countries. So that's the first element of this. So how can climate finance facilitate this? I have three central ideas. First and foremost it provides support for countries to meet their climate goals. A lot of people that are familiar with the NDCs know that the promises made, particularly by developing countries, tend to be conditional. This means that they say we're going to do these items one through five because we plan to do them, they're part of our development activities and then we'll do items six through 35 if we get the financial support we need from other actors in the community. So the first and most obvious thing that we can do with climate finance to accelerate and enhance our ambition is to provide support for the activities countries want to do and have self-identified. This is pretty straightforward. Second, another thing that I think is really important is climate finance can help us facilitate risky investments in risky places. This is a phrase that I unfortunately cannot take credit for. I've stolen it from a colleague. But I think it really sums up the kind of call for what climate finance is supposed to do. We heard some reflections earlier about how the private sector really needs to be involved in these conversations. It's quite unlikely that we're going to have enough public sector financing to really meet all of our climate needs. So one of the things that climate finance can help us do is de-risk those investments and crowd in private sector activities by providing the sorts of loans or other materials to get that interest into the game. And the last thing I'd like to talk a little bit about is building capacity and deepening global partnerships. And this is where I think we come back to the SDGs to some extent. As we know, SDG 17 is on global partnerships and working better together. And in a lot of ways, I think climate finance isn't necessarily about what we fund, but it's also about how we work together. There are a lot of opportunities for actors like CEDA or for the Green Climate Fund to work with countries to develop best practices on how this should be done and build capacity in the countries to make sure that other sectors are mainstreaming climate into their activities and there's the correct enabling environment to move forward. So this should be seen as an opportunity to re-embrace multilateralism and collaborate rather than step away from it. Thanks. Thank you very much, Kevin. That's great. I'm going to move us swiftly on, Kevin. I'm sorry to not give you a quick question. Although I'm fascinated about the risky investments in risky places. Sounds very interesting. Perhaps our panel can reflect on this. So my job is not only to be moderator. I'm also a stagehand. So I'm going to give you about 20 seconds while I place the tables in the right place to think of potentially a question you might like to ask our panel because I will open up for the odd question from the audience once the panel has had a chance to present their reflection. So just give me a moment while I move some tables. Excuse me. Thanks. Thank you very much everybody. We now have a fantastic panel joining us. I'm going to introduce two of those members of course because you have not heard from them yet. So we've got, of course, Ms Helen Clark with us. Helen comes with all of her experience of leadership and I'm sure will provide us amazing perspectives on that. But we're also very happy to have with us Inga Buxton who is the Deputy Head of the Global Agenda Department in the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And we also have with us Karin Isaksson who works at CIDA and has been working on issues with natural resources, gender, energy and has a particular focus on SDGs and SDG policy as well. And our last panel member, of course, is Dr. Orser Parshon who is our research director here. So I'm actually going to ask you all to take the stage at once please. So just to break the ice a little bit I'm going to ask you a quick question before offering Ms Clark the floor to provide some interesting remarks and responses to the presentations you've heard. So I'm just wondering in the last year what has particularly inspired you when it comes to thinking about achieving and implementing the 2030 Agenda? I'm going to start with you Orser in this case. I think it's difficult to pick actually. So I'm quite inspired but I think to bring it back to Sweden in the world now, I am very encouraged by the how costs of social norms are starting to shift. Hopefully it's going to last. I'm talking about meat consumption and flying. So that's inspiring. Thank you. Hello. Well I look at the two agendas very much as interlinked. So I think two things have inspired me. One is your compatriot Greta. What an incredible impact. Greta Thunberg has to be the best person in Sweden who helped today for inspiring a generation of young people. It's interesting to see where that goes but she's had an impact. I was at Davos and this young girl saying to those leaders your house is on fire and you got to do something. I mean she has got world attention. That's inspirational. I think the second thing that should inspire us is what the Intergovernmental Panel climate change said about the feasibility of meeting the ambition of the Paris Agreement. And often when we think of their reports we think of how challenging they said it was. But what they say is that it is geophysically, economically and technologically possible to meet these targets. That should inspire us. Inspire us to focus on the obstacles which are the politics and mobilizing the finance and getting the society wide buy-in. But it's feasible and we should be inspired by that. Thank you Helen. I think despite the fact that we are seeing an international climate where multilateralism is being questioned by many I think it is very inspiring to see from the individuals like Greta to big companies on the municipality level of government to national governments the agenda is very much alive and it's both meeting actors and companies here at home in Sweden but also when you go to developing countries you can really see that there is very much a live agenda that people are very committed to and I think that's very inspiring. Well I'm going to copy you Helen I really think Greta has made an impact on decision makers but also on other young people obviously. I myself have a daughter of 17 and she is taking this on and walking in the footsteps of Greta but there are Greta's all over the place I work in development cooperation and Greta has a voice but there are so many young people out in Africa and Asia that are taking this agenda on or similar agendas relating to ways to plastic to educating other young people so I think we have a movement going on here. Thank you very much Karin. I'm going to turn back to you now Helen and just thinking a little bit about we've heard Greta, we've heard about the social movements for change and I'd really like you perhaps to give your reflections on how leaders how people in politicians power both in countries but also in multilateral organisations take on board those sorts of calls for change. What needs to happen what needs to be prioritised in order to go from ambitious ideas to real implementation on the ground. Well I completely agree with what Antonio Guterres said to leaders coming to New York in September to the five summits by the way the SDGs high level political forum the climate summit the universal health coverage high level event the financing for development review and the Samoa pathway which is the SIDS agenda. All of these summits are going to be happening and Antonio said with respect to the climate summit to the leaders leave your speeches at home come with a plan right so that's a very strong message and I would hope that now in the six month run up to September that that will be taken to heart in capitals. My capital your capital what are people going to come to say. Now in my opinion everyone should be reflecting on the extent to which these great global agendas are off track and the damage it does to multilateralism if everyone signs up to global agendas and then do not too much about them and it's going to call I think for some focus on what the top priorities are going to be and while I obviously agree that across the SDG agenda things are interrelated the reality is that you can press some buttons and they'll have catalytic effects so let's work out what they are gender equality being one of them by the way as a catalyst for inclusive and sustainable development sustainable energy being another one for all the kinds of reasons that were touched on in the energy presentation right now so I think in September a bit of a wake up call I think we need to focus on the importance of international solidarity in the countries affected by crisis 1.8 billion people we're told by OECD live in fragile contexts and that's where the SDG under achievement is going to be and we have to ask are we just going to let things drift on as they are towards 6% of the world still being extremely poor in 2030 or are we going to undertake some of the actions that might change that world hunger has been increasing each of the last three years what can we do to change that very much by the way connected with the climate change adaptation I mean if I could sort of give you a visual image of where these issues come together I was earlier in March in Afghanistan a country that Sweden has given an enormous amount of support to over the years and it still needs it badly and in the western north of that country they have been suffering a very very severe drought for three years which has led to climate refugees from the subsistence farming villages of those provinces and you have just in Herat and Babgis province alone a quarter of a million displaced people living in tent encampments around the cities and by the way it just rained up there and the tents have been flooded but you know this is a country stressed by conflict subsistence agriculture hit with these incredible droughts the animals all died people haven't been able to grow food the storage has run out and they literally trekked down to the outskirts of the city with just extreme poverty and issues including the malnourished of children so you know here is poverty staring at you climate change staring at you the need for adaptation staring at you and I think we need to look holistically now at the needs of these most fragile countries and say how can international solidarity help because otherwise we marched to the city and we know those people on current trends are going to be left behind and that's not right Thank you very much Helen I'm going to turn to Karin actually who's been working in Southeast Asia and in Africa to sort of also take us down to the ground a little bit and talk a little bit about how the SDGs might be implemented effectively there Yeah and I'm taking a little bit of a bureaucratic view actually because I am a bureaucratic bureaucratic SIDA works we've been mentioning this tool over and over again today the NDCs the National Determined Commitment This is how SIDA actually tries to support our partner countries whether it's in Latin America, Africa or Asia to boost their capacity to work in a coherent way with policy coherence we see that in our partner countries there is a discrepancy the NDCs are hosted by the Minister of Finance or the Minister of Planning the SDGs on the other hand are often within the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Environment are almost always a very very weak agency so we need not only to boost the capacity of these institutions but we also need to make sure that there is policy coherence that we foster policy coherence that we and also trust that is a big issue to do because if these goals whether they are the climate goals related to the Paris agenda or if it is the SDG goals there has to be trust within the government to pursue this agenda so I stop there for now I think Inge we've heard from Kevin who talked about finance but concluded by saying that if you really do fulfill your commitments on climate finance then you're actually contributing to the standing of multilateralism in global terms and in fact Helen has also said something similar about not achieving the goals is a real risk because you're actually delegitimising the sorts of you work with all of those sorts of questions in practice where are we at the moment and what needs to be done to scale up and meet the sort of challenges that Minister Erickson was also describing when it comes to finance I think first of all if we talk about four years after the different agendas were adopted including the Paris agreement the focus is of course very much on implementation and very much what Karin has been talking about it's moving down to the country level and seeing how can we support government in implementing both their indices but also very much their SDGs and the plans they have and how this is also connecting to their development plans in developing countries and I think what we're seeing now with the UN reform the UN reform is very much based on implementing Agenda 2030 and efforts there of course is very much to strengthen the UN presence at the regional and national levels so we have efforts to strengthen the UN development assistance framework we have efforts to strengthen the president coordinators role to make sure that the UN can deliver as one on the ground we have similar discussions going on in the World Bank and regional development banks that for example the World Bank with its forward look is very much focusing on how it can support countries in implementing the SDGs and they're also very much looking at how the bank can be better at delivering in conflict affected countries strong focus on gender and climate change but of course this also have to develop on the ground and that is where we the international community and we as donors and sitting in boards in different multilateral organizations have to really put emphasis on the need to work together on the ground and here the banks and the UN have to work together very much there and this also comes to finance Minister Ericsson mentioned the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and I think sometimes the Addis Agenda is perhaps it's less well known than Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement but what I think the beauty of the Addis Agenda is that it provides a framework for resource mobilization and it's not only I mean ODA is a relatively small part when we talk about financing the Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement it is about investment but it is also about domestic resource mobilization helping countries to build institutions to become better at tax policies for example and it's also about social protection systems it's about labor market policies so I think having a more integrated view on what resource mobilization is about it's not only about financial flows I think that's very important to remember Thank you very much Inge also a quick and a simple question for you to then expand upon are we doing enough to connect the NDCs with what people are doing and what their plans are for SDGs can we do more, how would we do it I think this conversation has also contributed to me realizing that maybe we need to I mean we have done the mapping of most SEI, lots of organizations have done this mapping how does our operations what we do I think we can now sort of take the next step and look at the most critical areas for example following Lin's map of the red dots because I'm not so concerned about this coherence between climate action and some SDGs I'll give you an example you know about some quite ambitious goals that China and other countries have made regarding electric vehicles which of course have good climate benefits but also some conversations we have with our research partners pointed out I mean these are also a result of the concern about air quality in really mega cities in East Asia and South East Asia so actually decision makers are very concerned about the citizens and these really poor air quality leading to social unrest political stability so I mean then these ways of promoting electric vehicles becomes a response to those kind of social and political problems as well as having climate benefit so there are some areas where we have nice coherence I think but we need to look at more difficult ones like that Lin Reis as well like inequality for example if I interpret it right we need to take the heat map and actually then put into practice but where we may find some of those keys to unlock it may they might be actually at local level by looking beyond what's on the paper to the air quality issues that people experience in their daily lives and it's maybe that that is the sort of motivation for going forward at a quicker pace can I ask a question to all of the panel now which is really one around whether we need and Minister Ericsson mentioned of course Sweden's climate law so my question is do we need more rules, more legislation rules on perhaps what the World Bank can fund or should fund do we need more legislation to bring about a greater momentum at national level perhaps I turn to you Helen in the in the first instance for this well undoubtedly we do because if you're going to mandate the most basic changes like that to the energy efficient light bulb you've got to get the others out of the market and that's probably only done through a regulatory and legislative approach and I think that you know all the member states of the multi-level institutions obviously can have a huge influence on what they're funding the World Bank's out of coal right that's fantastic but in our dialogues with China and Japan we need to be raising why are they still financing coal fired power production in other developing countries you know if you're going to walk the talk on Paris it's not just enough to be acting at home right you've got to act in the way you fund and support others as well and I think in terms of policy coherence for China well firstly the electric vehicle I mean one of the problems they're going to have is their streets will be well are completely clogged by cars anyway with however they're powered but if your electric vehicle is powered by a coal belching power plant then you know that's policy in coherence and the interesting thing about China is while you hear from the central government level that they want out of coal the provinces still seem to be cheerfully building the power stations so you know they've got some things to get right I think to walk the talk but for the rest of us for sure our legislative settings can influence where investment goes in the energy sector I well recall when I was at UNDP some fantastic work that was done I think with global environment facility funding in Uruguay to help them rewrite their energy regulatory framework and that incentivised very significant investment and wind energy which ended up providing cheaper energy that they had through the old means so power of legislation and regulation is very important Can I turn to Inga do you have a view on rules legislation or is it other soft power that's needed I think you really need both I mean I think we have seen very clearly with in order to address climate change you do need strong legislation but you also need of course voluntary commitments and ambitions and I do get up by talking to some of the big companies that really are in difficult industries like steel and cement for example the energy intensive and I mean they're setting themselves ambitious goals but they do also need legislation and rules in order to be able to move forward so I think it is incredibly important and of course the strength of the Paris agreement is that it's binding and I think that also of course helps the 2030 agenda is not binding on countries but I think you know there is still the peer review the countries leading by example that being very important that we Sweden and New Zealand together working to promote this agenda that the EU takes a lead and here I must say I'm very pleased to see now that we managed to get very good agreements among the EU countries now to really push for the implementation of the 2030 agenda with council conclusions coming up very recently and this should hopefully lead to an ambitious implementation strategy by the by the EU as well. Karin can I ask you I mean please do reflect on that question as well I have a question I'd really like to get from you which is really building on this word catalysation or acceleration identifying goals or targets that could potentially enable us to achieve multiple targets more quickly in your experience what sorts of targets or what sorts of areas might we want to prioritize I still want to reflect on the first issue because I was really interesting and that was actually I brought myself back to lunch I of course I favor legislation but there are also other ways to tweak and change behavior of companies and for example we talked about trade and including environmental clauses in trade agreements which actually then can change behavior of huge sectors in countries and again fiscal instruments we see I've been with the ILO and we saw that in Bangladesh we were able to support a solar panel program because of fiscal and taxation changes and there's a massive influx of solar panels at the countryside installed by women by the way in this context and at home and also green procurement that's also a way to change behavior in when we're addressing big procurements of whether it's in the cities or in the health sector to change behaviors of companies so and then I forgot your question don't worry about it I'm sure we can come back to it I do want to give time for the audience also too I'm sure I've thought of brilliant questions I couldn't think of but also do you want to also reflect on this question of legislation rules or soft? Yes and I'm a researcher in governance you are a practitioner of course but for me the take home message of reading the IPCC the latest report is that it's really I mean everything is needed it's all hands on deck so it's really not about prioritizing selecting the most optimal whether carbon tax or something but everything and also we know how long it takes for some of these new pieces of legislation or economic instruments to be developed to move through the democratic process so all hands on deck would be one response but I also want to give you a reading tip that the most interesting report I read this year is called geopolitics of energy transformation done under the IRENA international organization on renewables because it also talks about markets and how I mean making the case that we will see this fossil fuel peak in the early 2020s already and also looking at how different countries I mean how will the geopolitics change so really fossil fuel exporters and some of them are actually among these very fragile states they will face a loss of revenue and what will that mean also some countries are really well placed to expand renewables and can become winners so I think yes more policy more legislation but also really interesting to try to look at how will these markets develop and who the winners and losers might be from transitions either because they're reinforcing the sorts of inequalities that Oliver talked about or placing people in vulnerable situations as jobs change and coal-fired power stations close down for example now I turn to the audience please if you have a question raise your hand and tell us who you are and ask the panel if you have a specific person you'd like to answer your question please let us know Owen excellent Hold on for the mic sorry I should have said please hold for the mic because the mic is for the webcast otherwise no one will hear you Owen Gaffney from Stockham Resilience Centre and Potsdam Institute we're already talking about finance but you know we know there's a huge amount of money available in the system right now in the private sector Apple have got billions they need to invest and a lot of the big investments don't cost so much money for these startups etc so that money is available we need it for sustainable infrastructure then we have announcements in China the Belt and Road but not much on sustainability there we're doing something wrong in making sustainable infrastructure attractive to investors I mean how can we change that how can we sort of rethink that well one could tackle that from many angles yes this is tremendous amount of capital out there looking for home and some of the places most desperate for it are not at this time providing an enabling environment that would attract it because of lack of rule of law corruption poor governance things that many responsible investors will run away from so if I come back to points that have been made by Swedish friends here investing in the quality of governance rule of law is pretty important underpinnings for that enabling environment to be able to attract quality investment I mean and then also supporting the enabling policy environment which will bring investment into areas of sustainable infrastructure for example I think I mean Belt and Road is a whole subject on its own and no doubt some of the Belt and Road will be financed through Asia Investment and Infrastructure Bank now many countries including my own I think Sweden on the border but we have the opportunity to influence how it lends, what it lends for and I must say I'm not convinced yet that they've really got the SDGs and sustainable development and as I said it does concern me that China through other arms of lending is financing unsustainable infrastructure like fossil fuel energy so I think there's a range of areas we can look at there just one more point on finance because the finance presentation was extremely interesting to me particularly with the detail that it had on what is going into the Pacific and firstly countries don't want to borrow for adaptation they're seeing that as very much something that the industrialized world cause the historic stock of carbon and the atmosphere and the problems and they're expecting the developed world to stump up on adaptation and so they want it in grant form now a problem for the small island developing states is that many of them for one reason or another have moved into middle income country status with the development banks and when you get to middle income country status things are not as they were you know you don't get the concessional finance you're out of either and yet their vulnerability to major climatic events is extreme and when a huge cyclone or tropical storm comes through and wipes you out it'll wipe you out regardless of whether you're classified as middle income or low income but then how you get treated varies enormously and I was quite involved with supportive Gail Hurley who was our climate finance and finance Giro at UDP with Eric Solheim when he was at the DAC with the Pacific Island forum and Carycom arguing for the development banks to have a vulnerability index so that you didn't just give your concessional support to low income countries you had to take into account that Vanuatu may be middle income but cyclone and pan will destroy it and that these countries cannot take on more the threat burden for recovery and for adaptation so I think that's something that needs to be explored because these small island states are really on the front line of climate change so the vulnerability index that you mentioned that isn't yet being put into practice but you'd advocate that needs to be seen alongside with your middle income country and the other companies but basically the fact that you have these vulnerabilities needs to be indexed so that when you do face wipe out you're not going to have to borrow commercial rates to put it right and with these storms coming around more often I mean take Dominica in the Caribbean which got pretty much completely wiped out twice within three to four years it's just impossible to deal with this on a commercial basis. I'm looking at Inga actually whether she'd like to obviously one important factor is that what for example the World Bank and the regional development banks can do is also to leverage private investment it's very much about reducing risks and focusing in idea financing on the least developed countries but actually giving to middle income countries help through different instruments I think SIDA's experience with the guarantee instruments is an excellent example where it really makes a difference in terms of reducing risk we also have the Stockholm Sustainable Finance Centre hosted here in SAI and looking at innovative approaches to financing and that is very much about also tapping into the private funds Again I look to the audience are there any other questions in the audience at the moment Yes, please Thank you very much for this very interesting talk My name is Nagmena Seritusi I'm a researcher at Stockholm University Looking at how climate and sustainable politics in the US has developed what advice would you give to leaders to make their policies on sustainability and climate stick and not be rolled back so quickly Great question Thank you How do we make policies on sustainability sticky and attractive even in the face of perhaps the winds of populism Well you can only do that by having climate change literate electorates that don't elect such people in the end and clearly that's not currently the case in a number of countries I mean it's not only the US look at the recent election in Brazil which produced a man who is quite happy to clear the Amazonian forests and yet this is of such critical global importance to preserve the world's tropical forests but I think at least a mitigating factor in the US with its very complicated political system is you do still have these major states huge economies like California and so on who are committed to climate action so they're going to get on with it regardless of what the federal government says and while the federal government might like to try to clip their wings I don't think it's going to be very, very successful so we will get climate action out of the US but what a happy day it will be when there's administration that's prepared to take a lead at the federal level as President Obama was Also perhaps you have a reflection on this? Yes, I think it's a very timely and interesting question and I think one approach that I have tried actually had it for a while and now I think it's even more relevant is to work with professionals so there's been a lot of initiatives recently working with the sort of high level political leaders which has been very necessary but also to work with the actual planners, people working on energy models in departments so we try to provide some energy modeling tools for example so that these institutions change their practices also and maybe that will stick even though there are changes in political leadership I also thought it was interesting in terms of this kind of strange debate now going on I think in the climate sphere where saying should individuals take responsibility for reducing emissions through our diets, traveling and so on or is it like a system government and these are pitched against each other but I think that's a very false dichotomy of course to do system change you need to have public support and vice versa so I think that's a very unconstructive debate actually so we need to understand the need to build bottom-up support to promote social norm changes but also have these sort of policy instruments that changes incentives, changes rules etc I know the question mentioned the United States but perhaps stickiness and attractiveness is something that many countries struggle with and I just wondering is that something you've seen either here in Sweden or maybe also reflected in the multilateral context the ways in which you can make sure climate and sustainable development policies are attractive and actually followed through it's not just a question of having a populist government it can be something that many administrations face what's your take? I hope that Sweden can lead by example I think what we have been able to achieve it is about social cohesion it is about democracy it's about respect for human rights if you're going to succeed you need to have inclusive decision-making and address gaps that you have in society that's really critical so I think in that sense there are economic arguments sometimes I think when you talk about climate change and with the skeptics I think the economic arguments are convincing in terms of if you're really going to be able to compete in 10, 20 years time you really need to be at the front edge you cannot just turn the clock back so I think that's a very important argument but I think we should also be realistic what we're seeing at the moment with multilateralism being challenged is that we have to spend a lot of energy on just defending already agreed language which takes a lot of focus away from what we should be doing looking forward to actually raise the level of ambitions so I think that's really where at the same time I do think we're seeing in different multilateral forum that when the majority of countries actually stick together and continue to argue they actually win the argument in the end so we should not give up and see that multilateralism is dead but in fact we can still succeed even if it takes a lot of the energy Karin would you? Yes I'm thinking out loud I'm thinking just transition which is part and parcel of the Paris Agreement just transition was included as a struggle by actually the workers that was part and parcel of the negotiation process to foresee that the transition that we make from fossil intensive society done in such a way that people who will lose jobs because there will be losers in this transition that people who actually lose jobs will have the possibility for social protection for re-skilling upskilling and the like and also not only the people working in this kind of industry but the industry is of course in a geographical setting in an area so people in an area will also be able to negotiate with decision makers on possible future measures to stay on in that region or be ushered into new jobs and now this just transition is actually an instrument by the ILO has taken it on board and it has been developed both by the workers the employers and the Labour ministry so it's a grounded instrument I mean there are examples of how not to do things and the most recent one I think is the manner of announcements of the increase in the diesel tax in France if that had been accompanied with statements about fiscal neutrality and improving cash transfers or whatever to the lower income groups who are disproportionately affected in terms of impact on budget you might have had a yellow jacket revolution that paralyzed Harrison and other places for weeks on end it reminds me of an announcement the Nigerian government made just before Christmas one year when they said they were taking off all the fossil fuel subsidies and people just went ballistic and they had to back off all the other desirable things right to tax diesel to remove fossil fuel subsidies but the concept of the just transition is don't hurt the people at the bottom as you do it so I think we should be very inspired by what has happened in Spain where minister Teresa Rivera is fantastic as she's a minister for ecological transition she has moved very quickly on the closure of the Spanish coal mines with a big package for the affected regions Germany now has the transitions in front of its central government on phasing up coal and they put a date of 2038 and of course we will say faster faster but they say it is going to come with a package for the transition so if we want to diminish the obstacles to change we have to be very much thinking about the impact on affected communities social groups and so on and make it possible for the transition to be fair. Thank you very much. We're going to ask one final question so we've heard that well there's just over 10 years until 2030 and we're going to be achieving the goals we've heard from the IPCC that we've got limited time and we need to accelerate and it needs to be deep and broad transitions to meet our climate goals so what are the priorities in the next 5 to 10 years starting with you also well as I said it's really in a way one of the priorities you have to do everything but if I could make a wish instead because we know I think that countries like Sweden and New Zealand need to show leadership and lead by example take this responsibility take the responsibility for finance I think it would be very interesting if an emerging economy sort of took on a leadership role as well and I'm talking not about the BRICS Brazil India, China and so on but there's something called the next 11 countries like Vietnam and others just to maybe shake things up a little bit I think that would be a compelling argument that we are countries that are on a clear development path and taking on board climate change it's a wish so we'll see what happens well just on leading by example New Zealand Government announced at the start of last year that they would no longer permit any oil and gas exploration in New Zealand waters now of course there was a predictable outcry by that sector but the point is why embark on new economic activity in that area when you're starting to be a stranded asset as the world moves towards renewable so that's a very important leadership I think secondly on your point about a different kind of country stepping up I recall at the Durban climate change conference Mela Zanawi came from Ethiopia and he had a carbon neutral strategy for Ethiopia and he was basically saying we're one of the poorest countries on earth and we desperately want human development we want poverty eradication of all these things but I want to do it in a way that's not going to wreck the environment further I've just been in Ethiopia recently and people are saying why isn't the New Leader saying anything about the climate change issues and I think for the development partners actually supporting Ethiopia to keep that agenda alive would be very important because they are the second biggest population on the African continent so what Ethiopia does is it can be a very significant and a big example I mean if I'm going to pick priorities I think in climate action the most urgent big things are the cold transition and secondly the tropical forest agenda and there's many ways that countries can support that I think on the SDG accelerators I know the mantra about everything's indivisible and everything has to be done by running a government where you couldn't have 17 top priorities and 169 equal targets so you do need to you do need to prioritize particularly for least developed countries where everything is a priority but you can't do everything so what are your biggest enablers to me firstly it's gender equality because I just think if you can include women and support women to be educated they're full potential economically empowered have voice this is catalytic and transformational secondly I think energy transformation is a huge issue access to basic energy is economically empowering and I could say a whole lot about what I've seen on that around the world and the third thing I'd say is education which is also transformational right and I think people's eyes up to the potential the issues the pressure they can then put on their politicians to do things that are inclusive and sustainable those would be my three priorities thank you very much Helen wonderful summary there Inge I think for us and where we're sitting it's very much to ensure that the multilateral system delivers and delivers on the ground so in the regional context at the national level how can we support governments how can we ensure multistakeholder inclusive processes that's something that I think we need to address and I mean we work on a number of estuages also the connection between oceans and climate we have a feminist foreign policy which is very much to promote gender issues but it is also about for example estuige 10 on inequalities that perhaps it's not has not been so highlighted and when war could be done in order to really ensure that no one is left behind what can I say more I think it has all been said but from a Sida point of view I just was thinking about something that Kevin put on a slide in one of the last power points and that was of course how to support countries with the capacity development and they're really asking for this but not only capacity development as such but very much the south to south learning and I really liked what you said about finding a leader in the developing world and if we could promote that kind of thinking and I think Sida and New Zealand could be a broker as countries to promote this kind of interaction between countries promote south to south learning and then find new leaderships not from us I think we we should actually step back a little bit there is something an expression in Sweden that says talk and that means that if you're on a hike the most fit person should not be the one leading the expedition to hike or whatever the fittest person should actually be in the back to be able to see that everybody is ushered along and to ski or run up to the front and shout information about who's not coming along here and then run back and so I think Sweden should take the kø and take the back wonderful thank you so much Guy and with that can I ask you to give a round of applause to our fantastic panelists thank you well thank you very much well that was even more inspiration I think that we just heard then I have to confess I'm a real lay person but what I heard is that there's a diagnosis there's a cure has been identified and there's lots of doctors in the room working on the patient but there seems to be still a wee way to go I do have a background in international fisheries management law and the discouraging thing to learn from that is often the patient died before the cure was put in place however I do think in this issue I think there's already enough happening internationally and at the state level that I am more optimistic and we did hear all these inspirational stories from Greta to the national level as a diplomat I did the challenges how do we get more countries to all row in the same direction because countries like New Zealand and Sweden I think we are the ones rowing a bit harder than us but we're going to get there but there are other countries who are rowing the other way so there's a lot of work to be done at the diplomatic level as well but what I heard today was was incredibly inspirational and as a New Zealander I'm looking forward to working with Sweden on these issues I'm looking forward to working with SEI on these issues maybe you can open an office in the Pacific next how about that thank you so much thank you very much for this this meeting and I really think it was very inspiring at least in the end coming to the Pacific I think that's extremely interesting I've been in Vanuatu once made a campaign for the election there with the Green Party actually and that was a memory I will never forget come back I think a lot of you are talking about Greta I saw her on the first day she was outside the Swedish parliament with a sign but she says she doesn't talk about her I don't want you to hope I want you to panic that's what she said I'm not sure if that's the right thing I think we really have a considerable amount of challenges ahead of us to fix the climate question but there are paths already taken we can do this we have the energy possibilities we have the wind we have the solar we have now also batteries and storage systems we can go like SIDA and New Zealand go out in the African forests and jungles and go to a village and give them the possibilities to do their homework in the evening the first time it's really a wonderful thing that is happening now SIDA is working a lot with that with the Swedish money from the international development money and I think we have enormous possibilities but we have to dare to use them that's the thing and we have to say to people also I think that now is the time to do it and tomorrow will be better if we take bold to take this change and do it in the way we know we have to do it it will not be better if we go away and talk about the nationalistic agendas that want us to just go inside and talk about them or we a very short narrow agenda I think we can do this very bold things and I often talk about the greens in Germany and they were in government for now around 20 years ago I think they introduced these feeding systems for solar wind and that was the start of the fantastic evolution so now we have cheaper solar and wind energy than nuclear power and coal even in many areas so that is things can change we can do the right thing and invest in the good things for tomorrow and I think as a right in many ways but I think hope is still very important to show to people that tomorrow is something even better than today thank you minister also I have really not much to add I do recommend you to look at Greta's full say joke on twitter today it was very funny actually but we wanted to thank you all for joining us and also there will be opportunity to mingle a little bit after thank you very much everybody can I ask everybody to roll these please there is still hope yes