 Hello, everyone. My name is Salvatore Pinzotto. I am the Secretary General at the International Rubber Study Group, and I would really welcome you at this event that ISG has organized together with C4FTA and the International Rubber Research and Development Board. We are going to have one hour and a half to spend together during this event, and we are going to have a lot of speakers, so without any doubt I would like to invite Robert Nasi, Director General of C4 for a welcome address. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon to everybody and for the people here in Seoul and mostly also for the people online. I'm particularly happy to welcome you to this event, which is co-organized by the International Rubber Study Group, the International Rubber Research and Development Board and C4FTA on promoting green economy growth in natural rubber system and beyond. So why, why is it important to discuss about that? I mean, first about we are in a sort of a very traditional forest reform, I mean, sort of here in Seoul, you are a forester talking to forester, and I think it's, I remember a comment by your colleagues, I mean, sort of out of the four big commodities, the one that is closest to a forest is rubber. All palm is not a tree, and cocoa and coffee it's a bit different. So, and rubber is originally a non timber forest products that were invested in the natural forest in Amazonia. And it also a different characteristic compared to many of the other large commodity, 85% is produced by small owners in six countries. 95% of the rubber is probably produced in this section. And so rubber is a tree, it produce rubber trees, the tree he produced rubber, and he produced timber also. And so there is a potential for rubber to play a role in terms of adaptation and mitigation of climate change, producing renewable material, rubber and wood, and also having an importance in the economy and the livelihood of many people of millions of small older. And this is something that is not not really properly accounted for. And I think it's a bit of a pity because it will be very important and interesting. And it will allow us to look at trees being more than simply sticks of carbon. And now we want to transition to a bioeconomy that means replacing fossil fuel based product by by best product. I mean a sort of, you all know that we have a natural rubber and synthetic river and a sort of specialist here but I think that the natural rubber is something like 45% of the of the consumption. And I think that there is a role for more natural rubber produced by a tree as a renewable material, compared to a synthetic rubber produced from fossil fuel as a non renewable. And we all know that fossil fuel, they are better in the ground that in the air. And third, for people will look at it, I mean a sort of, there is an impressive array of people in the room and online that will explain us how we can move into sustainable rubber is not to say that there is no problem with rubber. We move from five million hectare to more than 11 million hectare in 10 years. In some places I mean some forests have been cut to put rubber but ultimately I think that rubber is one of the community that has a potential to be sustainable. But I think there's also a community that is missing some sort of overarching. Certification or sustainability standard that something that will allow, maybe like the RSP or something better for that will allow to have a sustainable rubber brand, deliver to the market and getting. So, a lot of potential. And I'm very pleased to have this year and I will stop and really listen to the presentation. Thank you very much. Thank you Robert for this introduction and now I would like to invite Dr Abdul Aziz, Secretary General IRDB to give a welcome address. Dr Aziz. Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, first on behalf of the board and directors of the IRDB member institutes, some 22 member countries, I would like to express our appreciation and thanks to the organizers for this opportunity to highlight the important role of the small holders in ensuring the success of the green economy for natural rubber now and into the future. The most important role of the small holders is to continue producing rubber, even though the last decade has been very challenging, not to talk about the pandemic but also the climate change situations where you know unpredictable weather events affected the productivity of the rubber small holdings. So it is important that the small holders be rewarded. They should be a remunerative price for them to continue producing the rubber, although, if we look at the last decade price has not been very good very low price, but the small holders continue to produce this important industrial raw material. So what is important now with the climate change incidence increasing incidence of important diseases, especially the latest that we have now is Pestalo theopsis. So the important leaf disease that's causing a decrease in productivity at least about 20% in many countries now from Malaysia, Indonesia is also in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and then what we need to highlight now, the focus of the IRDB is to continue the research and development activities. Most important is breeding for high yield latex high yield wood and disease resistant clones of rubber which through the IRDB now we are making exchanges free exchange of rubber clones to all the IRDB member countries involving some 49 clones. So what I would like to highlight here is the IRDB will continue to focus on the research priority areas such as breeding, rubber modification, rubber technology, because nature rubber is utilized in some 40,000 over products. And there are millions of small holders, more than 40 to 50 million of small holders and their families who are dependent on this crop. So it is important that both the consumers and those that who are actually projecting the important role of planting rubber in terms of mitigation of the climate that small holders should be given ruminative price. They have continued to produce even though the price has not been ruminative. So now it is time to ensure the success of the green economy now into the future, especially when we are talking about the problem with fossil fuel and all these things that there is expected to be increasing demand for this important industrial material. We should look after the interest of the small holders who are the predominant producers of this commodity. Thank you very much. Thank you Dr. Zitz for this introduction. Now it's the time for the first presentation. I'm glad to introduce Dr. Raghavan that is the Executive Director of the Rubber Board of India Ministry of Commerce and Industry is also chairperson of the International Rubber Study Group. So Dr. Raghavan please, the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Salator. Good morning to all of you. Good afternoon to those of you across the noon time. I'll introduce myself. I am Dr. Raghavan. I'm Executive Director of Rubber Board of India and I'm brought a small presentation with me which I'll be sharing with you. I'll go through the presentation and probably after that we can have a Q&A session. Two interesting points were raised during the introductions by Mr. Robert and Dr. Assis. Mr. Robert pointed out that rubber is closest to the forest. And Dr. Assis mentioned about the need for having a regenerative phase, both of which are very important aspects when you look at the picture of climate change and sustainability. So I'll come to the presentation proper. Climate change mitigation is basically the sum total of actions taken to minimize the intensity of climate change and to protect global ecosystems. So sustainability is one particular and important component of this, as much as what is sustainability? Sustainability essentially means what do we live to the future generation? Is it something better that what we inherited or something worse of that? That would be the role of natural rubber in that. Coming to the Indian scenario, we have around 827,000 hectares of planted area. The tappable area is roughly around 700,000 hectares. And it is a small holder's crop. World over 85% of the holdings are small holders. In India, 91% of the holdings are small holders. And the average size of the holdings is 0.57 hectares. I would also like to say that in India, the rubber that is produced about 75% to 80% of the rubber that is produced is in the sheet rubber form. So basically the small holders have the farms in which they get the latex and they convert the latex into rubber sheets either through a homestead approach or to a collective where the processing takes place. So all these activities take place with minimal amount of machinery and its minimal interference in the nature. We have an India rubber research institute of India which is working with the rubber boat and that is headquartered at Kotaim. This institute has been, this research institute has been functioning from 1955. I have with me, Dr. Jesse, who is the director of the institute. And they have been doing a lot of research and studies into various aspects of the rubber plantations. They develop clones, they develop gentrically modified rubber and there is a division there which looks at the impact of climate change also. So whatever are the findings in the presentations are essentially the findings of the studies and research which is done by the RRI. Now, first is the carbon secretion potential of NR. We have studied this using the eddy covariance technique by measuring the canopy level carbon dioxide flux. So and estimated that the mean net ecosystem exchange is determined as 32 metric tons carbon dioxide per hectare per year. Now, this is what we have found out through our studies here. So roughly if you look at it, the NR Plantation in India released around 11.6 million tons of oxygen every year and sequestered around 16 million tons of carbon dioxide every year. So these are the broad figures. These plantations actually taking carbon dioxide and release oxygen in the quantities that are mentioned on the screen. More importantly, we have a comparison between NR and SR. We all know that NR is a natural product, SR is synthetic. But let us look at the quantum of NR, the carbon dioxide that NR sequesters and the quantum of carbon dioxide that SR releases. So for producing one ton of NR, sequestration is almost 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide. While while you produce one ton of SR synthetic rubber, it is at least of 10 to 15 tons of carbon dioxide. So that is a comparison. So we need to produce if you want to have a sustainable environment, if you want to mitigate the impact of This is what I was explaining the comparison between production of NR and the production of SR. And while NR produces or one metric ton of production of NR, results in sequestering of around 10 metric tons of carbon dioxide, production of one metric ton of SR results in release of 10 to 15 metric tons of carbon dioxide. So if you want a cleaner environment, if you want a more sustainable future, if you want to mitigate the impact of climate change, we'll have to minimize the production of synthetic rubber and maximize the production of natural rubber. Next slide please. Can you see this? I hope you can. Next slide, can you see the next slide? No, we're still on slide number three. You should move to slide number four. One second, let me just reload it. Okay, now it's four. Now it's good. Okay, okay, this is organic carbon and soil. We have done about how the rubber plantations impact the organic carbon content of the soil and found that actually the organic carbon content improves due to the leaf litter addition. And our studies show that around there's 10 to 20% increase in the organic carbon content of the soil over a planting time, which we take as about 30 years. Next slide. And this is a water use efficiency of rubber trees. This is significant so far as the water mining rate, which we studied using the SAP flow system. This is a real-time study and not based on estimates or anything, the real-time study in which we fit the instrument concern onto the trunk of the rubber tree and measure the water mining rate. We have compared it with the other crops that is growing the main rubber growing area in India, which is Kerala, the southern state of the country. So the alternate crops that are grown, one is coconut, which is quite broadly cultivated in the state, and the other two, Eucasia and Eucalyptus, are water grown through the social forestry department. So we find that actually the water mining efficiency of rubber is much higher when compared to coconut, Eucasia and Eucalyptus. For rubber, it is only about 20 to 25 kg of water per tree per day, whereas for coconut and Eucasia and Eucalyptus, much more. So the water use efficiency is also higher as so far as rubber trees are concerned. Again, what will be the total carbon emission from a rubber farm and from the processing units? Because as I said, in India, the processing is from latex to feed rubber, very little of the block rubber is made from the couplings. So what we found is that during the life cycle, 27 metric tons of carbon dioxide is emitted from a rubber farm. When you compare it with 32 metric tons per year, which is sequestered, the emission is very small. And the emission from processing units, which basically converts the latex into feed, is only 25 metric tons per hectare per cycle. And this low emission is due to very low fertilizer requirement. Actually in India, the rubber plantations need very low fertilizer because rubber is planned only in soil, which is favorable for the cultivation. And the other planting and agriculture practices are not a big source of greenhouse gases emission. Next, biodiversity. Initially, NR was recommended as a monoculture crop. So we did not recommend planting of other trees or crops in rubber plantations. But now intercropping has been recommended for two reasons. One, to promote biodiversity. Second, it promotes a alternate source of revenue also. Because the cyclical pattern of the rubber prices, where you have a high for a decade followed by a low during the next decade, the farmer needs to have some cushioning against the vagaries of the fluctuating prices. So we are recommended intercropping with medicinal plants, food crops, fruits. Common ones are pineapple, we are recommended cocoa, we are recommended coffee. And medicinal plants are a good source of revenue also for the farmer. So these are NR based homestead farming systems, and it improves the biodiversity and improves the soil health. And that again contributes to mitigating the climate change impact. Soil health. There is minimum tillage of the soil while planting rubber sapling. Normally it is done by manual labor. Occasionally we use machines also, but mostly it is still done. Because as fall holders crop, they cannot afford machines is one reason. Second for them, that's when they do the pitting and others by themselves, the conservation of soil also is ensured. And it sustains the soil health because less fertilizers are also used as I mentioned. In India, the use of fertilizers for rubber plantage is minimal. These are the advantages of whatever I said now. Substantive carbon sequestration, sustaining soil health, low inputs, better water use efficiency, supports biodiversity and less carbon footprint. No. So far as India is concerned, we need the sustainable development dollars because we don't cut down forests and plant rubber. Rubber is planted in area where the replacement is normally with like I said in Kerala, coconut trees have been replaced by rubber, bamboo has been replaced by rubber. We don't cut down forests and grow rubber plantations. We don't have use of child labor in any of the plantations in the country. We follow the good agriculture practices which are recommended. Some of them I can list out. One is rain guarding. We are popularized rain guarding because it is four to five months. We have monsoons, particularly in the rubber growing areas in South India. Second, we have recommended low frequency tapping system, which means that the farmer needs to tap only once a week. And the condom of latex produced is almost the same if you do that. So low frequency tapping has been recommended. Self-tapping has been recommended. We give some financial incentive for people who do self-tapping and low frequency tapping. We are looking at inclusive growth and social security. Now rubber has played a big role in actually rehabilitating the tribal plantations. They used to in the north-eastern state of Sribra, there was a practice of zoom in which people used to, it was a moving tribal settlement. They used to settle down one area, burn the forest, live there for some time, then move to other area. So it created, played havoc with the environment. But after the rubber plantations were introduced in Sribra, they all settled down and that is not only help them financially and help them move up the social ladder, but also help to conserve the environment in that part. So it is used as a social security measure for promoting inclusive growth in the country. Next, the way forward. Now, the advantages of rubber as a green crop has not been properly acknowledged as a, this is a sad truth because rubber ultimately is an industrial property. So the green traditions are not always identified. Now, not many people know about the advantages of natural rubber, how it impacts the environment. What are the advantages? How much carbon dioxide is secreted when natural rubber is produced? How much carbon dioxide is released when synthetic rubber is produced? This has not been understood properly. Second, we need to, if you're working towards reducing the carbon footprint, we need to promote natural rubber. And it can be used. We should not be growing this purely as a crop for producing industrial raw material. It should be part of the reforestation programs, the greening programs, rejuvenation programs. So we have river rejuvenation programs. We can have rubber planted there. There's soil conservation happening there. Any other rejuvenation programs that happens, we can actually use rubber. Social forestry, instead of planting acacia and eucalyptus, as we've done in the past, we are recommending that natural rubber should be planted. So if you bring in a lot of these policy interventions into the book, then there is much better scope for increasing the area under cultivation. The bottom line ultimately is that the farmer should get a remunerative price. This is where the government intervention is also required. When the prices fall below a certain level, the farmer finds it unremunerative to produce rubber. So we had a situation in India where a lot of farms were left untouched. So one of the state governments had introduced a policy for providing incentive for rubber production. And then we from the rubber board side had adopted a policy of adopting farms which are left untapped so that we could continue to produce rubber from them so that it does not lie idle. So these sort of policy interventions are also required to sustain rubber plantations and make it viable alternative for greening up of the country and of the world. So this is a brief presentation from my side. Thank you very much for your patience hearing. I'll be ready to take questions at the end of the session. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dr. Raghavan, for this interesting presentation. You pointed out a few important elements in there and also you introduced a topic that is climate change and natural rubber systems and how they interact. And I think the second presentation of Thierry Serès, Chief Technical Officer of Michelin will present an industry perspective also on this topic. Thierry. Yeah, good day everyone. Thank you very much for hosting me at the WFC. Hopefully you can see my screen and please confirm slides are moving correctly. So thank you, Salvatore. My name is Thierry Serès. As you said, I'm the Chief Technical Officer at Michelin and my presentation will be about climate change, resilience and mitigation. Is it okay for the slides? We can see it. Okay, very good. Well, so starting with a few important background information. Well, you might be knowing, but we have about 6 billion rubber trees planted on earth. So almost as many rubber trees as human beings on this planet. And as previously said, it is an absolute key material for the Thierry industry, which accounts for 75% of the natural rubber consumption, but also for numerous applications. So we have thousands of applications using natural rubber. There will be and there is already a growing demand for sustainable raw materials. And as an example, I just give you an example of what is mission and commitment in terms of a sustainable material rate in our tires. So in 2021, let's say today, we have about 29% of sustainable raw materials in tires and mostly natural rubber. And as a commitment of growing to 40% by 2030 and 100% by calendar 2050, and all tire makers are making similar commitment. And the same time, they are all racing, we are racing to net zero as said before. And as Dr. Aziz said, in his initial words, global warming will impact the rubber industry. And that's why resilience to climate change and mitigation mitigating climate change impact is so important. So moving to our next slide, I would like to show you how climate change could impact the yields and what we call the viable marginal zones for rubber cultivation. So we did an exercise combining the IPCC model. You all know about the five scenarios just released by the IPCC. And crossing that or combining that with a rubber model which has been developed by the teams of Sirad and particularly Dr. Gohhe in a publication made in 2015. So that rubber model will key in different parameters like the rainfall, the temperature index is a low or high temperature, the duration of the dry season, the thermal amplitude, the occurrence of lease disease. And all of that will lead to what we call a climate marginality index for rubber trees. And you have an example on the map on the right side. With the baseline today, where can we go over so the darker the color, the most favorable the zone so that's for the world, you can have it for country by country. This is the example of Thailand. This is a one as an example in Africa in Cote d'Ivoire. And this is a baseline today what we are presently doing is to process the data, the predictive data from 2020 up to calendar year 200. So that we have a good projection of what will be the climate condition in the next two decades and how we should adapt and become more resilient. So how to be resilient is the next question. So what I show you today is a model. And what is important, every model is fed with assumptions and these assumptions have to be science based. Similarly for the rubber model, what will be important is to understand how the rubber tree will behave when the average annual temperature will go beyond 28 degrees C, which is the non limit today. And after which we enter into big question marks about what will be the impact on the yield and the growth of rubber trees. So we need more science on that three parameters. As well, Dr Aziz was mentioning about the IRDB, a clonal exchange. It will be very important to invest and to develop a better genetic material for better tolerance to high higher temperature water stress and leave diseases. And what will be important as well is to test the rubber varieties in the projected climate conditions, not in the in the one we are facing today. As already mentioned as well, the yield improvement is absolutely key because we need to get the rubber we need on less land because the competition for the access to land will become more and more critical. And the productivity increase is also of prior importance and it can be achieved through low frequency tapping, as Mr Raghavan was mentioning. We can tap the rubber today once a week and get a similar yield as in D2 or D4. How to achieve it through a large dissemination of high performing material, the vegetable material and the good agricultural practices. At country level, what will be important is to exercise a proper land use planification taking into account that predictive climate change model. So that will be important. And last but not least, giving you an industry perspective. The more efficient the raw material we use in our tires, the better because if we can achieve a lighter tires, longer lasting tires, it will have a huge impact on the remote consumption and the pressure on the use of raw material, natural rubber in particular, will be lesser. Climate change resilience is very important, but not enough. And as said in the previous presentation as well, our priority will be to contribute to the mitigation of climate change impact, and also the rubber tree contribute to carbon sequestration. Our value chain also is also emitting CO2 or CO2 equivalent gases, and our priority is to reduce emissions from the very upstream portion of the value chain, until the end of the value chain through efficient tires or efficient rubber shipping. So I will focus on the very upstream part related to rubber farming and rubber processing. And I would like to mention that we just developed what we call a farm to form a carbon calculator. Following the GIG protocol, and that will help have an excellent view of where we can act to reduce our emission. So focusing on the rubber farming. So today it depends on the country and the farming system you are using, but you can emit up to 600 kilo of a carbon dioxide equivalent per ton of rubber produced. And the road towards net zero farming is very much achievable. How to do it with the yield improvement, the higher the yield, the lower the carbon footprint. Of course, no deforestation or no negative land use change. A reduced use of a fertilizer, particularly nitrogen fertilizer, how to achieve it with no tilling, no bare soil, a smart use of a legume cover truck, limit the mechanization and the need for transportation. So the processing site. Today, if you want to produce a ton of natural rubber, your energy consumption will be around two giga joules per ton of natural rubber through electricity or LPG. And it is highly achievable to reduce that footprint by about 30%. So we can move to cleaner energy, decarbonized energy, because in some of the producing country, what we call the emission factor to produce electricity is pretty bad, and that's a very important direction to decarbonize that electricity. The waste water treatment is not marginal because it can emit methane, also contributing to climate change. So I just wanted to share some of the directions we could activate to reduce our footprint. And the carbon calculator, which we just developed jointly with some industry partners, could become a standard of the industry and help support that important ambition. Basically, that was my message today. The world will need natural rubber, but we need to anticipate changes, climate change impact, and to adapt our practices. So thank you again for your attention and well open to all of your questions. Thank you very much and now over to you. Very interesting presentation. I would say you put 2030 ambition 2030 is now very close. And I think we need to work hard to achieve those targets. Now, I would like to open a short Q&A session. So if there is anyone present here or also online that would like to ask some questions to our speakers, Richard. I was wondering about the commitment to the sustainable rubber materials. Could you give us some more information about how you're defining sustainability and what are the current sustainability frameworks that you're using to be able to deliver this very ambitious commitment, I should say. Thierry, you would like to answer to this? Well, I can start and Salvatore and other people in the room feel free to complete my answer. First, I would like to say that what works as sustainability is not the Michelin's one or any individually forward, but it is a collective road we need to all embrace. And we are glad to have the global platform for sustainable natural rubber, which has been incorporated a couple of years ago. I think it was 2017 or 2018 for all stakeholders in the value chain joining forces and defining the criteria for sustainability and the main action items to be implemented. So what I wanted to show you today is just an angle about the impact of climate change we need to anticipate. And the priority we should be giving to climate mitigation through the reduction of CO2 emission. So yes, that's really ambitious. That's only one angle. We have a lot of other aspects, including a social aspect, which I just mentioned through the low frequency tapping, for instance. But the global platform is there to define a common platform about what we call sustainability for natural rubber. And what I presented today is really a one eye light about carbon emission reduction. So Salvatore, feel free to complete and hope it can answer to your question. Thank you so much. No, I just want to point out anyway on this topic of climate change and natural rubber systems. ASG has done a lot of work since June 2020 with C4FTA and with IRDB and CIRAD as well. So there are a lot of publications and articles and also we presented two papers in this conference that can be downloaded certainly from the ASG website. And these papers have been shared with all the stakeholders in the natural rubber sector. So I think it's very important that the sector actually work together on this topic and share as much information as possible. I have one question for Dr. Raghavan, a quick one, because he was mentioning that the sector should promote the green credential of natural rubber and any suggestions on how we can do that, Dr. Raghavan? Yeah, thank you. No, one would be the interesting upon the respective governments to have some sort of incentive for natural rubber and to a disincentive for the synthetic rubber. This is something which is very important because this should whatever is the incentive to natural rubber should go into a sort of a fund which would help the growers during the times and the price falls below what is remunerative for them. Right now this is treated only as an industrial raw material and as per the dictates of the market, the prices keep fluctuating. Now what if it's also treated as an important element in the climate change mitigation program, then its relevance becomes much broader than being limited to being an industrial raw material. It is this sort of policy change that is required on that. On the one hand, we need to adopt the elements of traceability to ensure that the practices followed are sustainable. On the other hand, we also need to bring in policy initiatives so that the green credentials get the necessary recognition. And we'll have to take up with the UNCCC also so that the prevailing norms are changed and that it acts in a way to encourage the increased cultivation of natural rubber, keeping in mind its green credentials. I hope I satisfy your question or I've clarified. Thank you Dr. Raghavan. Thank you so much. Okay, I think now we can close this. Okay. Okay, there is a question from James Griffith saying is the GPS and are linking downstream producer to upstream OEM manufacturers the optionals they call the platform to deliver the remunerative price for natural rubber to small older and mitigate the intensity of climate change. If not what time type of platform and programs are required. And I'm not so sure if you want to answer to this one or if Dr. Raghavan want to answer this. I'll just see the question it is not about really we just check it out. I'm just here speaking. I can give a try. I see two questions indeed in the flow. One is about certification systems and the second one by James is about price for natural rubber to small older. So starting with question number one. Well, I'm not sure certification is the best way to achieve sustainability. It's one way for sure. But as I said before, we have like more than 6 million small orders producing natural rubber and certification might not be able to address the risk of the stakeholders. So it could be part of the answer. And well, FSC could be a could be a one answer. But if we want to address a larger number of people we could and that's our policy today. This is a risk mapping. So we developed an application for for that. And then after trying to mitigate the risks through capacity building actions. So that that could be a way to address the issue with a larger number of people about pricing. I think GPSNR is a platform linking producers manufacturers and users NGOs civil society. So that's a very good place to to define sustainability criteria. This is not a platform to to to discuss about how that pricing today which is mostly driven by demand and supply. But yes, I mean for sure, we need to to incentivize the players who are playing a very positive role to mitigate the intensity of climate change or whatever. So that platform is meant to to mostly define the criteria and adopt a common policy. So maybe you can you can complete my. Maybe we can say. Salvatore, I would just like to add one point on that. Okay. You know, it certainly offers a very important and valuable platform, but to get the message down to this asset is a small holders crop when you're linking the small holders with the manufacturers the end users and bringing the other stakeholders in. We should not underestimate the role of the national bodies that can play, because you can see that the growth rubber is cultivated in certain countries it's not cultivated in all countries. The national bodies are very important role in promoting the cultivation of rubber in channelizing the use of rubber in identifying the land and in promoting good agriculture practices. So the national bodies also should be an important stakeholder in the mechanism that links the growers with the end users and the manufacturers. So while GP and SNR offers a good platform globally, we should also ensure that there should be similar certification bodies at the national level, which are accredited. Then only will be able to have a wholesome development in the sector and have a platform which is broad enough to accommodate all sectors. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Your point are very well received. And, okay, I think now we can move forward on with our panel discussion and and the panelists that are online and also in Seoul, and I would like to ask Dr. Mr. Aziz, Secretary-General of IRDB, to make three minutes. Thank you very much, Mr. Salvatore. Ladies and gentlemen, first, I'd like to mention that, you know, the rubber tree is very unique. Sage and Thailand, India and the other countries around February, March, the leaves turn brown and then drop. And this is important because it can affect microclimate change. Example to code is central Vietnam. When they started growing rubber, and then with the wintering everything, there is an improvement in number one the organic matter of the soil. Even the microclimate in the area improves. So that that is number one. Number two, I like to emphasize, we are only dealing with heavier Brazilians is there are nine other species of rubber, which is untouched. And this is what we are trying to do now, we have carried out expeditions into the Amazon jungle of Brazil and we are planning one into Peru to collect the severe species. To provide an opportunity because the focus in the IRDB now is breeding, breeding for high yield or both latex, timber, and also disease resistant. So we have to make use of these different species where they provide a very healthy pool of germ plasm. And this is one area. And then the other thing, cultivating rubber provides an opportunity for the smallholders. The rubber is a very generous crop. The area if you put the planting distance you can put in bananas, you can put in sugar cane papaya because the, you know the, the, the age of the plants, by the time they need to tap, it can take six years, seven years in the case of small holding. But if they do practice intercropping, they are likely to visit their holdings more frequently. So the rubber trees will also benefit by this frequent visit. So this is one area of important where no other crop can provide that sort of intercropping or generosity of the trees to share that piece of land very limited on economic size of the small holdings. And yet other crops can be put because this will supplement the income of the smallholders. Not many countries provide support for planting materials. Some countries they do provide assistance. Others, the smallholders have to go to do their own, and it's a heavy investment. And then later on when you tap, when the price is good, you encourage them to actually stimulate the trees. They cannot afford fertilizers. They can afford the stimulant. So they are, they are stuck in this poverty trap. So I think it is our responsibility, our duty, and I'm very happy that Dr. As I mentioned, sometimes when we have this new initiative, we forget that governments invest millions. You know, for example, Sri Lanka is the oldest rubber research institute, 1909. It is still in existence, and the government is still injecting funds. Some of the smallholders, they're not very happy with the consumers. I've got to be very frank here. And to do this, to do that, improve quality, it seems to be that never ending. But there is no reward for whatever changes they make. They produce the best quality, the price remains low. So this, you know, you talk about sustainability, it is people, planet price, all these are important. So smallholders are still in the poverty group. So one way of helping them to ensure that in the future, we have people who are still interested to grow this rubber. Otherwise, it will become very, very expensive in the future. So help the smallholders and provide the assistance. For example, the intervention by government mentioned by Dr. Aghavan in Malaysia, there are months that we cannot tap. So government provides some assistance to the smallholders. In terms of the research, can you close your talk? Okay, I will close by saying that it is the focus on the R&D. You know, three minutes is very short for the R&D to talk about the research. So it is important that the consumers also realize that you need the material, you cannot continue to have it produced when the price continues to be low. And as far as R&D is concerned, we are working on different planet and also trying to encourage smallholders for value addition. Through their co-op, they should manufacture something. So these are efforts that consumers should come together because you need that raw material. Certainly quality rubber is needed for very good tires. So please work closely with the smallholders. That's good enough for that fine being. Thank you very much. Thank you Azit. IRDB has done a great job actually over the years and continues to do so. So we certainly collaborate with IRDB to have better clones and better rubber. So you mentioned Amazon and now we are very glad to have here a Brazilian expert, Diogo Esperante, that is Executive Director of APABO. And APABO is also an SG industry members. So we are very glad to have you here. Diogo, please. Okay, hello, so what are you, thank you. Well, I don't know if I can share here my screen just a second. Let's see. Okay, here we go. Okay, so three minutes. Okay, let's try to do this. So hello everybody, my name is Diogo Esperante, Executive Director of APABO. We are the Association of Natural Rubber Producers and Processing Plants here in Brazil, Sao Paulo, Brazil. And I'm here today to talk a little bit about sustainable natural rubber, obviously, in our perspective. In three minutes, obviously, I won't be able to give a wide scope of the current status and opportunities for that subject. But I will try at least to share some of the opportunities that we are looking in now in our region, and that might serve as an example of a way forward. Here in Brazil, basically, we were talking about Amazon, but I am, sadly, I have to inform you guys that basically don't produce any more natural rubber in the Amazon as of now, produce about 100 tons a year. And the national production in Brazil is about 200,000 tons. So basically, where we produce all that rubber, 66%, 67% in Sao Paulo, where I'm at, where I'm here, where I am here now, talking to you guys and other neighboring states such as Goya, Minas Gerais and other states such as Bahia and Mato Grosso, but in the previous, in the last years have been their production. What we have as an opportunity in those regions regarding sustainability is that of an impact that it was not caused by rubber production but by cattle pasture. We have in those regions where we call the Brazilian savanna about 30 million hectares of degraded cattle pasture. In the main areas where we produce rubber, Sao Paulo, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, Goya, we have about 20 million hectares of degraded cattle pasture. And why I'm saying that that is an opportunity because for instance in Sao Paulo where we have 67% of all the production, 80% of all processing plants, 90% of all industrial consumption. We have been planting natural rubber basically upon those areas of degraded cattle pasture. And there is a legislation in Brazil that also obligates producers to have 20% of their land into natural forests. And there is this opportunity of in the cropping natural rubber with natural forest within those regions. So, if we take along the 130,000 hectares that we have a rubber in Sao Paulo, and we would add another 20% of what we call reservas like guys with in a cropping of natural forests with natural rubber, then we would have an additional 26,000 hectares of natural rubber interrupted with natural forests, and obviously bringing all the benefits, sustainable benefits, not only environmental but obviously economical and social because we would be benefiting the local communities with it. So this is one of the opportunities that we're looking at our action plan right now with this is we are creating common funds of interested agents within our industry to help finance this investments. There are already some companies and interesting to say, not only companies related to rubber industry but companies in other sectors that are looking into and are interested in financing planting natural forests in a crop with natural rubber here in the region. So this is just a small portion of some of the things that we're doing right here and that I wanted to share with you guys so thank you very much for your attention. Thank you, Diogo. Thank you very much for this introduction to Brazil and natural rubber in Brazil. Now I would like to ask Dian Sukumarja, senior officer of forestry of the Asian secretariat to provide his presentation. Dian. Yeah. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everyone. First of all, thank you to the organization for inviting the Asian secretariat to this very important event in conjunction with Wood Forestry Congress. I just would like to briefly present the overview of natural rubber dialogue in ASEAN. That's a point on the brief figures on natural rubber in the region. I think you may already know that the trade value of natural rubber in ASEAN to global in 2018 has reached recorded to 12 billion US dollar and it was decreased into 11 billion US dollar in 2020. Perhaps not sure pretty much but perhaps due to the COVID pandemic 19 and the export value from ASEAN to the global in 2020 recorded to 9 billion US dollar. However, it is it was decreased from 10 about 11 billion US dollar in 2018, which is 18%. And you also may be aware that me that Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam is the main producer of natural rubber contributed larger trading in the region, as well as globally. Natural rubber looking at those numbers has been an important community actually for the region and supporting the economic growth of ASEAN number state. Just briefly, under our cooperation in agriculture and forestry, we have main sectors addressing issues related to crops, livestock, fisheries and forestry, but unfortunately at the moment has yet discussed matters related to rubber or natural rubber under our sectors. Although, I think it is surprisingly although ASEAN number state actually traded the natural rubber including Singapore and nine ASEAN number state produce natural rubber, but it was it is yet discussed at the regional level. I just would like to inform that under ASEAN Economic Ministers, we have the ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standard and Policy and a rubber based product working group that oversee the development and implementation of mutual recognition arrangement and harmonize regulatory regimes related to the nature, related to the rubber overall and also to identify standard for rubber and nature based product for ASEAN to harmonize with international standard and quality. The ASEAN under the SACSQ also has developed the ASEAN framework on rubber laboratory network, which is just to maintain and also ensure that the quality of rubber from this region is the best and also following the international standard. As I also learned from the previous speaker, there are some issues related to the natural rubber development in the region, including the Dr. Raghavan also mentioned about small-fielders, how the policies can support small-fielders natural rubber production and also how they can access to financing mechanism. The second is of course sustainability of natural rubber production, policy and general issues, always the challenge for this natural rubber development and then in terms of technical low seedling qualities and regeneration as mentioned by Dr. Abdul-Ajiz as well. I think small-fielders need support for the best clone to be planted in this region and then also in terms of sustainability, maintaining sustainability resources still lack management skills for the small-fielders. And then of course climate change. Climate change impact has reduced the production and also might also cause pests and diseases out big. How the region could promote green economy growth in natural rubber system. I just would like to echo previous speakers that the natural rubber could influence livelihoods of communities surrounding the forest and create job opportunity. Although the has yet intensively discussed at ASEAN, natural rubber has been an important commodity for the region and supporting its economic growth. And therefore there are some potential window to promote sustainable agriculture in enhancing natural rubber production sustainably and then encourage agroforestry practices in rubber plantation by mixing crops and the other rubbers and other food crops while also maintaining biodiversity and ensuring people's livelihood and also of course maintain soil versatility. And there's also the need to create favorable policies and regulation to support sustainability of natural rubber and ensure land tenure security, promote private sector engagement and support capacity building also one of the important areas. Last but not least, at present, ASEAN is moving forward to promote sustainable agriculture and circularity, promote nature resolution and the carbonization efforts as well as carbon neutrality. And it is important to linkage those set of priorities in the region with sustainable natural rubber system. As potential windows for further discussion later, there is kind of platform, available platform to promote dialogue on natural rubber, including the working group on social forestry as Dr. Robert Nasi mentioned, rubber is considered also a non timber forest product. I think through the working group on social forestry we can further discuss this natural rubber system or mechanism. The second one is working group on forest product development, it is perhaps related to the utilization of rubber wood. With that, I conclude my presentation and thank you Dr. Salfatori. Thank you. Thank you Dian, thank you very much for this introduction to the work that the Asian secretariat is doing also on rubber. And now I would like to ask the first speaker in presence here. And that is Richard Laiti that we have seen before is Southeast Asia manager from PEFC. Richard. Thank you, and I hope I can put some slides up I actually have a, a in person interactive tool, but if my slides could be put up. I would like to just introduce about developing successful partnerships for quality infrastructure and as in, and how the week promote the green economy in natural rubber. And so, I first would like to comment a little bit about what some of the previous speakers have said about GPS and I is been an inclusive platform. It doesn't allow governments and associations to be members of their platform voting members. And so, I like I would like to follow up the colleague from India's response that we need to include national approaches, and that Michelin also mentioned FSC as a certification system. And this is impossible for some companies like in Vietnam, which is now excluding all of the small holders from Vietnam or the 70% of the small holders from Vietnam Cambodian allows to access markets. So these sorts of policies we need to think about what is equitable in the rubber sector. So, I would like to show that PFC has grown in Southeast Asia with Thailand and Vietnam becoming members we now have more than 60,000 tons of certified rubber on in the market, going into electric cars, and we have about 200,000 hectares of rubber wood that is being used by the local furniture market in Vietnam. And we are working with the national standards in Thailand, and we have full support from the government, and the, which is a critical part of an enabling sustainable rubber. Next slide please. So yeah I'd like to introduce this idea of building more confidence between the tree owners and the standard owners. And this is about our projects that we have, where we have support from PFC membership. We have 330 million hectares certified around the world. We, there's no reason why we cannot include the 11 million hectares of rubber. And so we are doing pilot projects. We are supporting quality infrastructure. So order to certification bodies and accreditation bodies to be able to include small holders into the certification. We are working in these conversations at the ASEAN level, and I am very happy that Dan was here and he's mentioned some of the bodies that we've been working at, and a project that we have at ASEAN that can include rubber to be able to be part of the green economy that these companies and the stakeholders are asking. Next please. We have spent five years developing this in these forums in the Asia Pacific Forestry Week, and building on the Pan ASEAN Timber Certification Initiative. We have worked with the ASEAN senior officials of forestry, and we have worked with the ASEAN Consolidative Committee of Standards and Quality, which already have the rubber based working groups. And these government run processes should not be excluded from these sustainability platforms. And so we are taking it in on ourselves to develop the project that is led by Vietnam. We have been supported by UN Red, and we have mobilized it at the lower Mekong region. Now we have the project approved at ASEAN, and I would ask you to get your QR code scanner out and to give some feedback for the next slide please. That we would like, if you can, to scan this code next, because we want to implement this project. And it's a 2 million to 10 million dollar project that is needed to support the CLM countries of ASEAN. And once we do ASEAN, we can move to the APEC level. And this is the bottom up approach that PFC uses, which includes the cooperation with governments, research institutions, and the associations which have been working to end the rubber farmers for the last 100 years. And so PFC certification can help demonstrate the sustainable production. For example, the Vietnamese companies have been a case study for the ASEAN responsible investments of agriculture. And PFC can also be a way for the customers, such as Michelin, to be able to come and see the production and see what are our standards, what is the certification system, and being able to build confidence in a bottom up approach to be able to address issues that the small holders are facing and make sure that we can include them and not exclude them. And so that is my three minutes. Thank you. Thank you, Richard. Thank you very much. Okay, now I would like to invite Moisi of Southeast Asia, Deputy Regional Director of Pro Forest to provide this talk. Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and thanks for the organizer inviting Pro Forest to be part of this event, the site events in conjunction with the World Forestry Congress in South Korea. So it's my pleasure actually to share a few slides with you, very quick one. I hope you all can see it into PowerPoint. Yeah, as a mission driven organization, Pro Forest has been helping, I will say that all the private companies as well as stakeholders in supporting the transition to the agricultural commodities production and sourcing that deliver positive social and environmental outcomes for people and the planets. So, in our work with all the stakeholders, we always deployed our theory of change, which is here that to share with you about how we work within the supply chain and beyond the supply chain. I think according to some of the speakers that mentioned the point I think share with you probably is for under these two important component, because as we know for individual private companies like Michelin and some other private companies, they have to work with their suppliers regularly in order to collaborative and deliver their social and environmental commitments at all the volumes that they produce or buy, and then to work with their suppliers in the end to achieve the requirements that include the entire supply chain actors. I mean, of course there will be some systemic issues that couldn't be addressed, hence wise that we promote actually the stakeholder and the companies to work beyond their supply chain through the landscape collaboration or sectoral, I mean, initiative out there to actually address all these social and environmental issues that involve a series of different actors that fall within the same landscape or sector wise approach. To improve for us we do the plot, we also have our egress approach, learning from our experience through working with various agricultural commodities such as palm oil, sugar, soy, and some others. So throughout that whole journey, we learn actually in order to achieve, I think your own no deforestation on human rights, respect human rights commitments, you need to start with a systematic approach. From here there actually we, the company or entity could start with having a strategy or policy commitment in place. And this included, you must have an action plan or implementation to guide you along that journey. And then throughout that before you, I mean, after you have such commitment, then it's really important for you to understand your own supply base. So hence wise that companies talk about understanding through the traceability mechanism or even risk analysis that have in place. I mean, in order to understand and prioritize the next intervention with the suppliers and beyond the supply chain as well. And obviously engagement is key here. Therefore, engagement within and beyond supply change, we could actually bring a meaningful intervention to all the players that involved. And finally, not forget to mention the monitoring and reporting, which is also important to report your progress and demonstrate your commitments from time to time and achieve your milestone accordingly. So based on our experience, at this point of time we observe there are some sustainability trends or movement that happening around the whole, I would say, rubber sectors. So from the strategy or policy wise that we learned there are many companies now put in place their own no deforestation and respect human rights commitment. And then after that also carry out different I think traceability exercise and risk analysis or assessment within the supply chain. And through that actually prioritize the suppliers, especially tier one suppliers they need to engage with. And this is also important to provide capacity building for the small holder and small medium enterprises to the responsible sourcing for small holder framework, or some other framework in place. And I want to like to echo to some of the points bring up by the formal speakers. I think, almost everyone that say small holder is very important in this sector, hence wise that we couldn't actually ignore them I have to work with them closely moving forward. And beyond that, of course we are looking at involving in jurisdictional or landscape approach, or even promote company collaboration moving forward. And then finally, it's about again monitoring and reporting. We know that there are many different mechanism out there that could be actually deployed by by or adopted by by the companies all together. Thank you. That's my sharing. Thank you so much. Of course, now in rub not a rubber grab some issues clearly but I think no one of these issues could be solved if we don't get finance, right, or some finance to do that. So I would like to to invite Ben because land use forest and ecosystems in your specialist at the Green Climate Fund to provide this presentation please. So thanks very much for inviting me. I am by no means a rubber expert. And I can basically try and build on what's been said already, and try and draw out what what I feel maybe relevant from the GCF perspective. We are of course the GCF we have a mandate to try to provide a balance in climate finance between adaptation and mitigation objectives. We also have the aim to to scale up significantly over the coming years the portion of the support that we provide or the funds that we disperse to the private sector. So with this in mind. One of the things I think I'd like to highlight which I'm not sure we've really touched on so far is is the is the emergence of the zero deforestation policies from the supply side in the western world in particular rubber is now considered one of the six land intensive commodities identified as a potential driver of forest loss and in the emerging policy environment. In the UK, it's being identified in the draft environmental law as one of the potential commodities that will be focused on, as well as in the US, the draft Forest Act, which is a promoting sustainable commodity imports to to the US at the moment is not named in the draft EU deforestation regulation but this remains something that might happen in the future. With regard to this emerging policy environment, there is a very strong signal from supply side that the production of quantities like rubber will need to adapt. It's clear that from past experience for example with with the timber sector with a flag T the producer countries that are intended to provide this more sustainable supply chain to say the EU you can us are going to need to support to adapt their supply chains to these new market standards or whether policies that the the consumer countries develop will will not be implementable. We see at the moment that there's approximately I found the 2.7% per annum growth in rubber consumption globally. Currently, there's no sign of that slowing. Particularly in Asia with Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, China, Vietnam, Philippines being the top seven rubber producer countries as far as I could find out. This is going to be a real challenge. How are we going to keep that supply going on this increased demand to meet the increased demand with these new challenging standards and policy environment. Yeah, if we certainly opposite opportunities to direct finance to produce the countries to provide the institutional governance environment, and to enable the rubber industry and domestic rubber industries to to contribute to these global mitigation objectives that the supplier consumer countries are driving. But we also of course see the the need, as was pointed out by previous speakers for the domestic industries to adapt to the climate situation so the CRAD research that was noted that there is going to be some need for rubber plantations themselves to adapt to changing production in temperature exposure to new diseases drops in productivity. So there is a need for finance to be directed to produce the countries to help the rubber industry to adapt to this become more resilient to to this new climate reality. I also would like to echo what other speakers have said is the importance of small holders in this sector is clear that that many many people in the portion on particularly in Thailand and Indonesia of the rubber production is dependent on small holders, family businesses, a lot of the employment that is dependent on the rubber sector is informal, but I couldn't really find maybe other speakers who have these figures any firm figures at national or international level on the employment on the number of the amount of labor that is dependent on the rubber sector and livelihoods. When we're looking at adaptation objectives, this is absolutely crucial. So, we would like to see some more information from the rubber sector from stakeholders here about what is the employment situation, how it's likely to be affected in the coming years. Very encouraging to see the emergence of the GPS and are as as a global platform for for promoting sustainability in the rubber sector. Michelin is one of the companies that is aiming for for increasing the proportion of its supply to be derived from the sustainable sources. But we would certainly see from GCF side a need to work with the private sector and rubber industry in particular to accelerate the designs and speed up the rate at which rubber consumers are able to to meet the 100% goal of sustainable sourcing in the next decades. So there's, yeah, there's certainly a large potential for for for work for from GCF side at least to to work with the rubber sector and to to to work towards the contribute the increase contribution of the rubber sector towards both mitigation and adaptation goals. And we would welcome innovative proposals from from both private and public side to help us do that. Thank you so much Ben very interesting talk I think you touched two points that are very important. One of which is the lack of information for instance, I think the sector should do more on especially on the social on the social side. I would like to, there should be a recorded short presentation from Emily Gallagher. She's integrated rural development specialist C4. She will speak about gender equality and the role of women in the rubber sector. Good afternoon, my name is Emily Gallagher. I am a scientist for the sustainable value chains and investment theme with C4 ecraft in Nairobi, Kenya. I have been asked to speak about gender and social inclusion to promote resilience and economic growth and the rubber industry. More specifically, how can we address barriers for more equitable and inclusive value chains for sustainable rubber, especially in relation to women. Although we know the rubber production is a male dominated industry, we also know that women are active in rubber value chains and that there are different gendered norms between and even within countries. In some places female labor is recognized and valued and in other places it is invisible and oftentimes uncompensated. It is true that companies and CSOs are disrupting some of these gendered barriers in an effort to promote social inclusion and that the international rubber study group proposed steps to address inequality and the rubber value chain even pre COVID in 2019. And yet more recent studies still show similar patterns. To answer the question about equity and social inclusion, we really have to address the different barriers for hired labor on estates and at the processing node separate from smallholder production systems. The rubber industry has played a significant role in providing role employment to men and women, including youth, and has made progress in some countries in building the capacities of women to take on tasks traditionally coded as male jobs through targeted skills training and human capital development. So in some cases women form the bulk of the labor force, for example in budding, but are not well represented as tappers. While in many Asian cases women tappers are normalized. Companies which recognize and promote women publicly are working to transform gender norms. However, this only transfers the labor if it is not also accompanied by economic empowerment to transform gender norms around female control over income decision making capacity. And leadership. So with regards to safety and security, the industry can lead the way and developing social safeguards, sexual harassment policies, occupational health and safety standards, especially for pregnant women and nursing mothers. And where this happens, this has improved social acceptability of women working outside the home. Yet we still see that women need additional support to take on decision making roles to speak out especially in cultural context where women are not active in the public sphere. This can come through promoting women to supervisory roles, creating women's committees and public programs and having gender affirmative policies to have women represented at all levels. And when it comes to smallholder producers, there are additional barriers having to do with land and resource tenure and access to working capital to invest in the rubber farming system. The rubber industry can transform gender norms through capacity and skills building, recognizing female labor on the supply chain, promoting women's leadership opportunities and economic empowerment through direct payment to women farmers. Where family farms are registered as part of outgoer schemes or farmers associations, it is necessary to render the invisible female labor visible by registering women and ensuring that they are represented in decision making spaces. Pursuing alternatives to land titles to allow female farmers to participate in outgoer schemes and where possible, working with the development sector to provide gender specific programming, financial literacy and leadership training. So in answer to the question, equity and inclusion requires some investment and gender responsive strategies to build women's capacity to engage in men's acceptance of the shifting responsibilities. Thank you for listening and thank you to our donor, the European Commission and to our research partner, Anna. And thank you to Emily for her presentation. And last presentation is from Dr. Lakshmi Nair. She is that of economics statistics of ASG. Lakshmi, three minutes, three please. Hello everyone. Good morning. Good afternoon and good evening wherever you are. My former speakers as well as panelists. Lakshmi, can you put the presentation full screen please. I'm echoing with my previous speakers and fellow panelists. Those who are pointed out on very challenging aspects of natural rubber and also the potential opportunity for natural rubber for greening the economy. Just to point out some basic facts before going into the work that IRG secretariat has done for climate change adaptation and mitigation specific to natural rubber. About 30 million tons produced globally natural rubber is a key strategic material used in inducer application ranging from toys health care mobility, construction and aerospace. Many speakers previously mentioned that the importance of natural rubber being a naturally derived elastomer and the key importance of this raw material for greening the economy. Around 40% of the global rubber consumption is coming from natural sources and geographically both production and usage of natural rubber is concentrated in Asia Pacific region. The supply chain of natural rubber with the more than 30 million US dollar as a key role to play in both adaptation and mitigation of climate change. As an important land user is already mentioned by mostly and Richard like tea as a producer of renewable raw material, and of course, as a major economic activity. This this supply chain depends on more than millions of more than six millions of small growers who produce rubber and under challenging economic social and environmental condition. IRC has worked in collaboration with the C4 IRDP and Sirat for organizing and climate change workshop and secretariat has produced a policy paper addressing the climate change impact of natural rubber and how natural rubber can quickly adopt to those changes. We have seen that climate change is already impacting the rubber production, science based climate actions with the right policy tools, global rubber production can be safeguarded and sustainably increased on a lasting basis under climate change while contributing to climate mitigation goals. Focusing on the, the main aspect, the net zero transition in the natural rubber sector. The net zero transition is so important as it is the path to limit global temperature rises and to stop off the worst impact of the climate change. The global pandemic and the supply chain disruption provided both challenges, but also at the same time, it's provided opportunities for CO2 emission reduction in the supply chain of mobility, the main end user of rubber. Major business, economic and societal shift towards sustainable production and consumption embracing the circular economy underlines the transition to one point degree pathways. Effective update of sustainability if you look at the rubber industry landscape as previous speakers has rightly pointed out, both from an ecosystem health point of view, as well as from the socio economic benefit, which is to be included of small farmers as well as small and medium enterprises. Demand driven supply risk is limited. More action is required by companies focusing on restructuring their portfolios and actually reducing the emission in their extended supply chain. Governments and business need to act now with urgent urgency and resolve and to take a system wide approach. And to do that, we need collaboration and working across both public and private sector. Spending on energy and land use system as echoing with the previous speakers need to increase substantially and finance is needed to extend support for many of the value chain players to achieve net zero. Any assessment of GST emission of the end user supply chain and the scope three should be done not in silos as PFCs as rightly pointed out that both supply chain responsible sourcing within the system and outside the system. A holistic approach on emission reduction of all raw material used in the end user application should be considered. So what are the action point we have discussed and concluded from the study we have undertaken and the result of the workshop we have done the net zero emission pathways or transition towards green economy. Of course the climate action need to be grounded on science as the process is rightly pointed out on on very elements of that and Dr Raghavan also mentioned on that. The climate adaptive resilient and inclusive pathways for promoting the green economy, especially on the inclusive pathway is many speakers highly court on the small grower inclusive approach that the system has to adopt, whether it is top top down approach what is to be adopted as Dr Raghavan mentioned okay this is to have an inclusive approach of the region and the countries is the approach to be a bottom up approach, but to move that bottom up approach to adapt well to what the global requirement are to reach the net zero. So some level of harmonization need to be there from the from the country level approach to the global level approach. So to adopt to those changes of course what it is key is data. So, climate scenario analytics of the countries or the regions or the companies this is very much important for countries as well as company to adopt policies, aiming for net zero. And this Mrs Teresa is mentioned on coming up with a co to calculation metrics, of course that is important, but at the same time traceability in the supply chain with the digitalization and with the needed supportive capacity building programs and the much needed finance is equally important to have an inclusive resilient pathway for green economy. So integrated approach is a requirement for border sustainability dimension. It is not really natural rubber other material which is going into the different application of the end users need to be taken into account. And the bio economy and the circular economy aspects is an integral part of aiming the net zero transition for natural rubber and the rubber economy, which we could attain only through collaboration. A holistic approach is needed with both producers and consumers, the government civil society and all the players need to be in place to attain a sustainable development, which certainly it is inclusive and green addressing the many challenges and now we are facing the pandemic and supply chain disruption and many from a sustainable development point of view. So sustainable development of the rubber economy, mostly go all the panelists because various dimension pointed out, but whether it is to be brought in from the perspective of a certification or it is only a visibility checking of what all action is going on in the supply chain of various raw material, but of course what the sector as a whole to be addressed is a holistic approach addressing all these elements to attain a sustainable development for the rubber economy. Thank you. And we are already over time, I think, and we need to close very quickly I just want to ask Vincent if he wants to say a few words and then we can conclude this event. From here perhaps yes. No, thank you. Thank you very much. Salvatore, I'm sorry we don't have time for question but that just shows the richness of the perspective that we managed to gather really thank all the presenters for the very rich presentations. I think when we started to work with a bit closer with irsg a few a few years ago. It was also based on the from a research perspective for development perspective on the kind of the feeling that the rubber sector was underplayed in in sustainable development and in climate and it was in fact a critical sector in the way that it brings really all the dimensions together from economic social environmental and we talk about that all the time but in rubber we really see that it is a critical and a very special characteristic of the sector, and also looking at the role between intersection between value chain driving change through value chains and then driving change through land landscape land use approaches and all these these two needs to interact. So what what we see is it's emblematic for the green economy and it's emblematic for sustainable development. But it makes it a bit more difficult as well because it really requires coordinated action of of a broad range of actors as many have said today I will not cite all these actors again. But the idea is that there is I think a willingness to do things and a willingness to attract other actors that are perhaps less currently less connected climate change actors, finance sustainable development sustainable landscape finance sectors and so on to the transformation of the of the rubber sector. And I would see based on the exchanges today three, three critical pathways for transformation first we need to share knowledge, gather it and share it, and indeed raise the visibility of natural rubber as a component to other sector and that's why we were bringing to the attention of the climate change community really glad to talk now with the Green Climate Fund, because there are real needs in countries and we really need to show that fact rubber is a solution to to some of of the broad objectives. Then we need to put in place an enabling environment, not leaving the sector alone I think there is a strong enabling environment already in place but we need some mechanisms to just to enable sustainable practices and facilitate their recognitions by all actors and we know that even certification is a bit of also a challenge there is there always a price primer to certification and so on. We need to make finance and sustainable development finance work for the sector I think up above as mentioned that. And we have here an opportunity as I think Ben because I said because of the importance of making bones between adaptation and mitigations and and the fact that the climate actions now is linked to sustainable development Paris agreement has really recognized that this is a fundamental component and small holder based rubber system is basically an emblematic way to to to do sustainable development and social issues at the same time that you're doing climate action. And then the third pathway is really investing research upstream and downstream upstream because hope and as he has said at the beginning rubber is rubber is close to forest or the closest to forest but it's also in a way the closest to agriculture and farming. Because of the potential for rubber forestry systems and so on. And we really have here, perhaps even all research to revitalize and invest in an IRDB has been of course fundamental into into into this so far there's probably an increased role for them even in the future. Downstream new uses new uses adding values that will maybe also help solving a little bit the price problem because if you add new uses you add value you may reduce price productivity so in the future when we look at our relation and building on what we've done with IRSG, IRDB, SEAD in the framework of the the FDA research program that we know in fact bring into a new moment because we yesterday launched the new partnership really want to help the old this community of actors. I think we've talked the GPS and has been mentioned it. Maybe it lacks a little bit or we need to develop in a way of a form of a knowledge partnership as well to bring the knowledge component more strongly into this platform and if in fact help also IRSG as the main as the main and major institution that brings all these actors together to develop in fact the pathways for the future. We have the idea of a guide that needs to have to help these actors to for the development of rubber. It will need to be co constructed. So that's an invitation to follow up on these discussions to, to make that a reality in the framework of the new FDA partnership in which IRSG is associated with C4 SEAD and many others. Thank you Salvatore. Thank you Vincent. And from my side, I just would like to say no partnership that Vincent was mentioned before extremely important between organizations that have one goal and the goal here is to make this natural rubber sustainable because it's a strategic raw material. We need the natural rubber today we will need in the future for sure so it's very important that we all collaborate and within this collaboration of course the finance side as to as to be in the introducing countries and governments as to be part of this of the active part of these discussions. And we need really to do a great work for providing also to small orders in income that allow them to have a reasonable living and also be able to implement sustainable agriculture practice practices in their own plantations. So I would like to thank everyone all the speakers that have been here, the speakers online. We had, I think 42 attendance online as well. So I think it was a great success from my side and I would like to thank everyone once again. Thank you so much.