 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm delighted to welcome you to this webinar, which is the third presentation of the environmental resilience lecture series brought to you by the Environmental Protection Agency and the IEA. Throughout the course of this series, international experts address topics such as the circular economy, air quality, environmental governance, the bioeconomy, sustainable waste management, water quality, and climate change. On behalf of the IEA, I would like to thank the EPA for their sponsorship of this series. Today is Earth Day 2021 and we are delighted to be joined by Inger Anderson, Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program. I would like to thank her for finding the time to speak with us today. Inger Anderson has been Under Secretary General of the United Nations and Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme since 2019. Between 2015 and 2019, she was the Director General of the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Inger Anderson has more than 30 years of experience in international development, economics, environmental sustainability, strategy, and operations. For 15 years at the World Bank, she held several senior leadership positions, including Vice President of the Middle East and North Africa, Vice President for Sustainable Development, and head of the CJR Fund Council. Previously, Ms Anderson worked for 12 years on drought, desertification, and water management at the UN, including at the UN-Sudana-Sahalian office and UNDP. The title of today's address is Circularity to Restore the Earth. Ms Anderson will speak to us for about 20 minutes or so, and after her presentation, we will go to a Q&A session with you, our audience. You will be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should see on your screen. And feel free to send your questions in throughout the session. Don't need to work to wait until the end, and it would be helpful if you identify yourself and any affiliation when you ask a question. A reminder that today's presentation and the Q&A session are on the record, and also feel free to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle epa-iea. First, please allow me to hand over to Laura Burke, Director General of the EPA, for some opening remarks. Laura. Thank you very much, Joan, and I'm just, the virtual world is confusing me a little bit for the moment, but first of all, thank you very much, Joan, and really delighted. The first thing I should say, we're really delighted to be joining with the IAEA on this Environmental Resilience Lecture Series. The aim is really to bring all stakeholders together behind a collective message of resilience, emphasizing both individual as well as societal responsibility to be good stewards of our shared environment. And really by taking concerted efforts to improve air and water quality, by reimagining waste cycles, and by focusing on raising environmental standards and governance, we can address pressing climate ecological and biodiversity crises. So delighted to be working in partnership with the IAEA and really delighted that Inger Andersen is joining us today to talk to us about the circular economy, which is so topical in Ireland at the moment, and if you let me just for a couple of minutes talk to you about why, and hopefully that'll put in context Inger's talk as well. So really moving to a circular economy is critical for Ireland. It's critical, of course, in terms of protecting our environment, but also protecting our economy and protecting local jobs. Our current model of consumption is built on convenience through short-lived or single-use products and disposable packaging. This happens in our homes and our businesses, worksites all across the country. We really live in a throwaway society. The marketing driven nature of our economy supercharges this behavior, urging replacement of products to ensure we're armed with the latest gadgets, fashions, homewares, long before we get full use of the products we have. But simply, there really isn't enough thought about where our stuff comes from or what happens when we're done with it. So we're busy accumulating more and more stuff, but really looking at the full life cycle of that stuff and whether we need it isn't taught through currently. So we're now developing a new national circular economy program in the EPA, and that's to be a driving force for Ireland's move to a circular economy by businesses, householders and the public sector. Creating a resource-efficient economy and resilient society requires rapid and far-reaching transformation across all sectors. And the EPA's circular economy program will support government strategy and translate national circular ambitions into the daily activities in workplaces and homes across Ireland. And I suppose what we're really doing is translating that aspiration into implementation on the ground. But our new program in a way isn't completely new. It really builds on 15 years of leadership by the EPA on waste prevention and resource efficiency. Starting from when Ireland and the EPA launched our first program of this type in Europe back in 2004-2005. And our work in this area includes Ireland's well-regarded food waste prevention program, the groundbreaking smart farming initiative, and the development of national guidance on priority topics such as construction waste and green public procurement. And we also support, and this is I suppose more recently, the Circular, which is an innovation and networking platform established just last year with 26 leading manufacturers to bring circularity into Ireland's manufacturing sector. And also, and I suppose this is my pitch to as many of you in the audience as possible, we also provide support funding to innovators and companies in the circular economy through our green enterprise program. And that's going to open for new proposals this year in May. And to give you an example of the type of things we fund, an example of our work in this area is the support we've given to send Mel's brewery and panelletto bakery in Longford to come together to use surplus bakery products as a raw material for beer manufacturing. And that's circular economy that I'd have to say I think is great and it's the type of circular economy I like. But working like this not only of course realises value from a material that would otherwise have gone to waste, but it creates a new product and that product has strong sustainability pedigree. So, I suppose to encourage you all to think about that and maybe bid for that program. In addition to that, we currently have a consultation program open asking about asking public and businesses to help shape this new circular economy program I was talking about. So we want your views and your thoughts with regard to the program's objectives and priorities and it's available there on the EPA website. So again, really ask you to engage with us on that consultation. But that's it from me. I now really look forward to hearing Inger's thoughts, her experience, her expertise and bringing how that can be brought into the Irish context and how we in Ireland can move closer to circular economy. So I'm going to hand over to Inger. Thank you very much and thanks for taking the time today. Thank you so very much to you Director General Laura Burke and also to Professor Owen Lewis for this kind invitation and of course to the EPA as a whole and IAEA for for doing the work that you do and for really pushing the issue of circularity. I'm not with you in in in person only two short years ago I had the great pleasure of being in Ireland for the biodiversity conference that was held in February of 2019. Yes. And it was again another example of Ireland's leadership and really seeking to lean in on these critical issues of our times. In these trying times, when we talk about resilience, most people turn to how to respond and recover from COVID-19 pandemic. And it's true that the pandemic has brought a lot of suffering we know millions of people have died. The global economy has contracted by around 4% in 2020 and livelihoods have collapsed with an estimated 120 million people pushed into extreme poverty just last year. The resilience go beyond COVID-19. This pandemic is but one symptom of how our planet's ailing health is affecting our own. Today on what in the UN they refer to as International Mother Earth Day. We have to think about hard about how to radically alter our relationship with nature and for the better. Today, we have to turn our minds to the solutions, the solutions to the three planetary crisis that we in UNEP speak of the climate crisis, the biodiversity and nature crisis, and the pollution and waste crisis. It's only in addressing these crisis together and these interconnected crisis that we can truly build that resilience. And as an unsustainable consumption and unsustainable production, as we just heard from you, Professor, Director General Burke are really the very drivers of these crisis. So we can only build resilience if we make the global economy entirely circular. So how to do that? Well, I hope to get to that through today's talk because there are tremendous potential to create prosperous, sustainable and a peaceful planet. And the actions we can take will help get us there. But first, let me just give some brief numbers of why we have no option but to change and let me start with the climate crisis because as we all know climate is in serious trouble. The atmospheric greenhouse gases are higher than they've been for 800,000 years. And as a result, the planet is warming. We've been already seeing these disruptive changes in our lives in precipitation and melting my sheets in glaciers and most recently and frequently obviously in extreme weather events across the world. We know that we've not done enough, even with the Paris Accord and its goals to limit global warming to under two degrees and to pursue 1.5. Now the new net zero commitments are interesting and important and they are covering much of the world's emissions, but targeting 2050, but promises is not that what's going to get us there obviously is the actions that we need to take. And right now, with what we're doing we are hurtling toward above three degrees. And so that's a little bit on the climate crisis now a little bit on biodiversity and nature. And as we've altered about 75% of the terrestrial surface of the earth and about 66% of the marine surface around one million of the around 7.8 million species that we have on this good earth face extinction and around 10% of forests have been lost since 1990. And again, we made promises in 2010 we agreed under the biodiversity convention on a series of targets that we should have reached last year, we have met none of these 20 targets the bottom line is that we cannot survive without nature and biodiversity. We cannot have our food have them have our foods be pollinated and our crops be pollinated regulating the weather the filter the water and so on, without biodiversity and finally of course, the third crisis pollution and waste that toxic trail of pollution, and waste that we leave behind that is growing every pollution is causing premature 9 million deaths from primarily from dirty air up to 400 million tons of heavy metals solvents toxic sludge and other industrial waste enter the world's waters annually and estimated 2.2 billion tons of municipal solid waste was generated in 2016. This is expected to grow to 3.4 billion tons by 2050. If we keep going with that throw away society that we just heard you refer to director general. So, have we done enough, we all know the answer no we have not. And these three crisis have devastating economic and social implications in the sustainable development goals we've set these lofty ambitions to create a planet of peace and plenty. So, we're celebrating planetary crisis are really undermining those hard one development gains and impeding progress, for example, even small increases in temperature risks, opposed risk to health food security to water supply and to human safety. In 2018 and loan damages from climate related natural disasters cost about $155 billion. So again, I mentioned the loss of pollinators critical to more than 75% of the world's food crops. The loss of those threatened annual global crops outputs at a worth about well between 235 billion to around above 500 billion. So, meanwhile, of course, since the mid 20th century, at least 40% of all intrastate conflicts conflicts between nations have been linked to somehow. This is not what we're in the position of or the competition for natural resources. So the burden of this environmental decline is always felt disproportionately by the poor, and by the most vulnerable and future generations will suffer even more so there's also that intergenerational failure. So the way we produce use and discard is responsible for these crisis at the heart of these crisis lies our unsustainable model of consumption and production metals would food fiber electronics you name it we wasted with throwing away money throwing away resources for our chance for a human for future of human health for future of prosperity and for future of equity, and only a root and branch transformation of the way we produce and the way we consume will enable humanity to achieve a well being for all within the earth's finite capacity. It's time to change our ways starting this year through this pandemic recovery through stronger nationally determined contributions that promise a renot that we are going to give into the Paris Accord every five years and coming up now for Glasgow. And that's how we're going to make the Paris goals achievable and reachable that's how we're going to reach long term sustainable sustainability through ambitious biodiversity framework that we're going to agree in coming at COP 15 under the biodiversity convention and through implementation of all the pollution and waste related conventions scaling up circularity and sustainable consumption and production has to be at the heart of these processes. And that is the 12th STG sustainable consumption and production in every single sector circularity and sustainable consumption and production can deliver these enormous environmental, economic and social benefits. Just consider a couple of points, applying circular closed loop approaches and demand sign measures to the processing of steel, aluminium, cement and plastic could achieve as much as 56% of the EU's 2050 emissions reductions for industry. That's worth one noting. So the global clothing industry, for example, emits more greenhouse gases than the international flights and maritime shipping combined. Not that they have flights and shipping should get a free pass, but we need to understand the footprint of our own consumption. That global clothing industry is responsible for growing land conversion by developing circular design measures using secondary raw materials and providing consumers with easy to access reuse and repair services. Circular economy can cut these emissions and the use of land to grow materials. So promoting repair ability, upgrade ability and availability of spare parts software support and material recovery and electronics, for example, could contribute to the fight against climate and reduce the need to gorge new materials from the earth. Collection and recycling only applies to 17% of EUA's produced globally. In this regard, we're proud at UNEP to be supporting a number of countries, let me mention here Nigeria, as a major importer of used electronics to develop a circular model for the electronic value chain, which can be replicated across Africa. So circularity can also build the resilience in our economies. The pandemic has shown the fragility and the limited flexibility of many of the global supply chains, for example, countries such as Cambodia or Bangladesh for whom textile exports and products represent about 84% of exports. We've seen orders worth over 1.4 billion canceled during the pandemic. And the current industrial agricultural models, meanwhile, rely on fossil fuels practices that damage ecosystems and supply chains and involve long distance transport and seasonal workforces. As a result, lockdowns have stressed food supplies in many, many places. Circularity can provide credible solutions to strengthen such fragile systems in food systems, for example, large scales investments in regenerative peri-urban production can bring food closer to consumers, reduce environmental impacts and fragility. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation research has highlighted that a circular scenario could lead to 50% reduction of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers for use by 2030 when we compared to 2012. And at the same time, it could result in a 12% drop in household expenditure. So friends and colleagues with many of these benefits up for grabs, we are seeing a surge in circularity-related initiatives and we just heard that from you, Director General. The EU's circular economy action plan foresees a cleaner and more competitive Europe. The African circular economy alliance is concentrated, excuse me, on low emission and climate resilient models that can emphasize green innovation and job creation. And the Latin American and Caribbean circular economy coalition and the global alliance for circular economy and resource efficiency both launched in February just now are working in the same space. So the good thing is that there are these alliances forming, there are constituencies nationally, there are locally communities that are moving this dial. There are many country efforts and initiatives and promises and cities are also doing a great deal. Let me mention the city of Phoenix, not necessarily a city you would know about in this topic, but the city of Phoenix has increased its recycling of waste to 36% by mid-2019 only from only 20% in 2015. So in three years, they've increased by 16%. In Accra Ghana, 95% of all electronic and waste, electronic and electrical waste, much of it imported from Europe, is collected. And most of this collection is informal. It has health impacts and efforts are therefore underway to train workers to safely and effectively recycle this waste. But we need to accelerate the transition and not necessarily export our waste to elsewhere. So let me offer up some suggestions for how we can create the necessary conditions to shift to real circularity. A few points. Governments must, must use the pandemic recovery stimulus to shift gears to circularity. Anything else would be nearly unforgivable. UNEP research shows that some investment has already gone into a green recovery and that's a good thing. In 2020, about 86 billion was announced globally for green transport infrastructure. That could not move as a shared and circular mobility system could mitigate all three crisis that I spoke about and potentially reduce costs of travel by around 70%. But similarly, let's talk about the construction industry because green building investment received about 32, 35 billion in this recovery endeavor, largely for building upgrades and for energy efficiency. And that could also promote new building techniques and more circular use of building materials. Investments in green research and development stood at around 28 billion. And so that's a good thing. But each of these we have to realize that according to our assessment only 2.5% of all the spending that has gone into the recovery, only 18% of the spending made in 2020 is likely to drive greenhouse gas emissions. So we need much more. So the first point was using the green recovery efficiently to drive circularity. The second point is that we have to reform economic and financial systems, because they are the way they are the ones that give us the mortgages that use virgin materials. They are the ones that can help shift together with government regulations. So let us think about how to reform economic and financial systems. We're seeing good movements in this front, but no debt and equity instruments related to the circular economy existed in 2017, and by mid 2020, 10 public equity funds on circular economy have been launched. According to Ellen MacArthur Foundation, assets managed through such funds grew from under $100 billion to $2 billion in the first half of 2020, outperforming many other funds in the same category. Other financiers are seeing the way the market is moving since 2019. At least 10 corporate bonds to finance circularity have been issued. And since 2016, there have been about a 10-fold increase in the number of private market funds investing in circular activities in the economy. So the trend we're also seeing in bank lending and product finance and insurance, but we need to have the government guardrails alongside of this, because it is the consumption of you and I, the clothes we buy, the vehicles we drive, the houses we own, etc. And this part of the issues of pointing fingers is at an industry is not enough. Recent research from UNEP's finance initiative does tell us that the finance sector need to do three things to speed up reform. We need to take transition to circularity into the organization's strategy and identify risks and opportunities to that linear business model versus a circular one and disclose the level of financing for circularity that they have on the balance sheet. It's important because the banks of course are supporting economic activities in the real sectors, but the banks do not necessarily control this without government regulations. So businesses and investors are essential to drive this and yesterday with Mark Carney and John Kerry we launched a new alliance precisely to help drive this. The major impediment to sustainable design practices is that sustainable products and services are often more expensive. Businesses offering repairs and refurbished products struggle to compete with newly manufactured products with labor cost rendering their margins to slim so we need to ensure that incentives and taxes drive businesses and consumers to adopt circular solutions. That starts with putting a price on carbon, facing up harmful subsidies and redirecting subsidies towards supporting solutions that contribute to circularity and to regenerative economics. So shifting taxation from production and labor to to resource use and waste is one way of doing it. So the third point that you can be used as a disincentive, for example by applying a tax to products that do not include every cycle content. So that was my second point, shifting the economy but the third point here is to improve the ability of small and medium size enterprises to deal with these external shocks by helping them move to circularity. And so we know that across the OECD SMEs account for 99% of all businesses so how to do that and here we're working with Kenya, South Africa, Tunisia and many other industry countries to support industries to do just that. There are financial barriers. There is a lack of government support. There is a lack of technical skills. So this is what we have to drive and ensure. And my fourth point is that we need to manage the shift to support industries and people to in in resource producing countries, because if we want to transition to circularity. And if we wanted to stick and to be fair, it has to create decent jobs in the world's poor countries in the world's most vulnerable countries, and they are often the resource exporting countries. So that's an important dimension that the wealthier countries need to take into account as they move forward on circularity. Because there will be certain losses and certain sectors will wind down countries can build on the experience of managing transitions for workers. For example, in the Netherlands, when the cold mines closed, well, it did affect about 50,000 workers. So putting that social safety net and retraining and redirecting economic activities become key. All the more important for the poorest countries, the resource exporters, when we need to ensure through trade and through investments that we can help them prosper. So for friends, shifting to circularity is a complicated task, and it is one that needs a whole of society approach today. We've assessed the role of governments, the private sector and financial institutions, but we should not forget that labor organizations, scientific and educational bodies, media households, academic organizations and universities civil society groups are also very conditioned to initiate to demand the transformation to circularity. They should all be empowered to voice and to be part of the solution. A carefully managed transition to circularity and sustainable consumption and production will be absolutely critical as we seek to deliver on the sustainable development goals to deliver on a world that is in accord with Paris and to deliver ambitious biodiversity and pollution agendas. It's essential to recover from the pandemic in a way that does not give us back to the old group. It does not store up more problems for the future because let us remember the pandemic stimulus is not money that was sitting in our accounts. It is monies that we are borrowing from future generations. Let us not leave that next generation with a broken planet as well as an insurmountable debt. This is within our reach. It will be essential for resilience of our economies and with all of society approach and a global approach. We can do this. Thank you very much. Thank you very much indeed, Executive Director Anderson. There's a lot, there's a lot for thought there. I must say that that almost final remark that you make about how these these assets which have grown in bank accounts are borrowings from the future is a very telling. I think it's very clear from your remarks the radical nature of the transition that is that is involved and the opportunities which present themselves in coming out of the this awful experience. There are quite a few questions so perhaps if I might turn to some of these. Well, let me, let me start off with one. How can we best address in built obsolescence, which is particularly prevalent perhaps in digital products. Is there a global standard that could be applied. So the question of obsolescence and maybe particularly that group of products. I think there is no global standard that could be applied. I think we are, you know, we have a stick and we have a large initiative that works precisely on e-waste, which, which has, as we know, very detrimental especially when we see open, open burning of the plastics that often in case the electronics are indeed open melting of the metals that are within this electronics. A number of companies are working on setting up assembly and reassembly. But I will invite most of the participants here to open a drawer with their old cell phones. Just to consider how we are use and how we're using our electronics in an inappropriate way and how we when we upgrade simply either throw it away or leave it in a drawer. Just to understand that there are fantastic materials in these products and rather than going to other countries and continuing as I said, Gording, we need to set up these, these recyclability, which means that the design it comes from the very design of products. And here electronics is a good, good example, but packaging is another. When we double layer a paper with a plastic we've already prevented recycling in a, in a, in an easy form. So we need to think about for every product, how we do this and this is where governments based on the science and people like ourselves in unit bring in based on the kind of global agreements that we underpin can help support. At this point there are no broader global agreements, although many electronic companies and each speaking to this point. Thank you. As it happens, just as you were speaking a question came in which is quite closely related but it's interesting because it's from Garrett Blaney who is chair of our communications regulator in Ireland. He thanks you firstly for an inspiring talk, but asks, do you have any thoughts on what actions could be taken by the telecommunications sector to improve the circular economy and how we should encourage these actions. So you've, you started to address those questions. Okay, so there is a site for the regular for the regulatory arm at the national or any other way, or and there is a site for the individual produce the individual purveyor of telecommunications. So buybacks are happening in a number of places when you get your new phone you can get a reduction if it's like your old car right, you get a reduction if you sell if you sell back. Then what happens then once you have sold it back it's out of your, your desk draw, but what happens to it. There's no source where and I won't mention specific companies but some companies are beginning to and any, any listener can Google and find out which companies which large electronic companies are beginning to, to have a disassembly and then reuse. There would be more of that. And we could also imagine a situation where there would be incentivized by, by the public side to, if you, if your device has got a degree of reassembly within it. There would be some incentives to buying this, just like we're doing now with vehicles, etc. We want to shift public behavior or consumer behavior to that to that level. On the one hand the regulatory side from governments and certainly on the other hand industry setting up buybacks and and easy disassembly today the way these items are constructed makes it quite hard to disassemble and to get the end of it but but this is this is a solvable engineering electronic engineering issue that can be addressed. And your point about connecting so the right incentives are in place, which underlines your point about the holistic approach to this so that several sectors need to collaborate to deliver the the intended result. There's a question here was, is the 2015 people in cyclical Laudato si on the environment, having an impact in tackling an environmental degradation. A question from Esneli. I absolutely think that when his holiness Pope Francis came out with the encyclical and made it so clear that the duty we have to our one and only us is one that we cannot possibly take lightly that that brought into outside the environment bubble in which I live, and it brought into faith communities, a deeper understanding and reflection. We are doing that we're very proud we have an initiative that we call faith for us, which combines many many faiths including obviously Christianity and obviously the Catholic church bringing voices of faith leaders to the table to the science and speaking to the care that we have to take for our common home. So I do think that this that the encyclical of 2015 coming at the time when we when we also agreed on Paris when we also agreed and sustainable development goals was a very important move by the Catholic church. Thank you. A student at our largest university at UCD Dublin, Jonas Paulson asks, what is hindering us from holding individuals or corporations responsible in the same way as we hold individuals or nations responsible for crimes against humanity. I mean, Jonas is right and he's asking a good question and he should keep asking that, because it's only our own level of lack of ambition, if you like. We need to, frankly, use all the voices we have including the voice at the ballot box to ensure that those we elect and it is not a left or right issue. It is an environmental and intergenerational issue that those we put in positions of making determinations for the future do so based on the science available environmental science. But each one of us in our consumption and production have a responsibility to and many times people feel like, especially when you live with wealth which we all do in the West when we compare to poorer countries. So turning off that light or walking instead of taking the car or recycling or whatever it is or not purchasing more stuff that we are just going to put in the cupboard. We may not understand that each of these actually have an impact. And then there are the bigger picture ensuring that our overarching climate goals are set with the level of ambition that we need to see. And maybe I saw that Seamus McGartney had a question here so maybe I just pick that up because today we have the climate leaders summit and we do need to see today that level of ambition, especially obviously and we are hearing that that will come out from the US, which is back in the climate accord and we will understood this morning that there will be very ambitious announcements coming out of the summit, which we agreed with great appreciation. We also very much appreciate and like to see the collaboration. It may be that there are different competition in other areas, but large emitters must agree and lead, and that includes China, and it's very good that there's some US conversations on this, because it's only this way by the large emitters putting their foot forward that we can actually make it. Thank you. There's a quite specific question from Harold Kingston in the Irish Farmers Association. He says that livestock manure is rightly classified as a fertilizer instead of waste. What place can the nutrients in human and industrial waste have in the circular economy or in safe food production. Thank you. I mean, first of all, as we speak about climate change, as we speak about biodiversity, this is a point I always make, the farmer is the friend, not the enemy. These are people across the world doing a critical job that ensure that you and I get food on our table. We need to help farmers shift to climate positive, biodiversity positive production, but never ever vilify the farming industry. That's sort of a point that I always have to make here. And the point here is that the kind of nutrients that we do have in our waste streams can be converted to either biogas, as we see in a number of places, or to other materials that we can use to enhance our soil health and soil fertility. And so the more we look into research in this area, the more we look into again, helping that process so that these are not just wastes that go into the landfill and then emit methane in their decomposition, but rather that they are in biogas digesters or indeed converted to fertilizer or to other products is critical. And it is remarkable that with all the human ingenuity that we haven't really invested in this and it is still a thing when you have a biogas digester in your local community. I mean, I just can't even believe that it should be a news item, but in my little community in Denmark. That's, that's a conversation piece that they have a biogas digester. It should be every community should have this because they would be able to generate energy or generate heat from some of these materials. Our audience is keeping up the diversity of the range of topics that they're posing for you. And the next question I have here is from someone whom you may well have met. Ambassador David Donohue, who was co-chair of the SDG negotiations at the UN. He asks, the circular economy is a compelling model, but can more be done to bring out its benefits for the poorest countries and peoples, the social dimension, and not just the economic and environmental. I mean, let's think about it. Today, where some of these resources are extracted, either from the original material or recycled, it is the dirtiest, most demeaning, most dangerous, most polluting jobs possible. If anyone has been to an e-waste place in Africa or elsewhere, you will know what I'm talking about. There are often children, often people barefooted, often there are smoking fires from plastics, etc. So you paint this picture. This is not decent work. This is not human dignity. But it is a day's living. And so what we need to do is to help those economies make shifts so that they're not necessarily dependent. And this, yes, we may need to disassemble, but let it be done in more factory like clean conditions where there is decent work. So we can demand this if we set the guardrails again for the degree of recyclability, recycled materials that we would like to see in the materials that we buy. If we could, just like when we used to have sweatshops and then we began to demand that we would not buy things that were produced by pseudo slave labor. So I think we as consumers, we do have a role to play here. But the awareness is low about we buy the new phone and we don't necessarily think about where the old one went, or the computer, what have you. But I do think that that's a dimension. And of course, in terms of industrial scale mining of new materials, we need to be mindful that these countries are dependent, as I said in my talk, on these exports. But we also need to be mindful of their finite, finite, of the finite nature of these resources. So finding other ways of supporting countries in making some of those shifts towards longer term sustainability has to be part and parcel of it, which is why in the sustainable development goal, we speak about leaving no one behind and we speak about equity and justice. And climate justice is a key dimension, as well as environmental justice at the global level. We have a question from a parliamentarian, our former Minister for Communications Climate Action and Environment, Richard Bruton, and he asks, does the focus of Paris on the production side to inventory of the greenhouse gas emissions. Can you interpret the examination of the entire supply chain, which is at the heart of circularity. And how can that be addressed. You know, I mean, Paris is a is an agreement negotiated by 193 nations and agreed to by all. The last thing I will do is to criticize this agreement. But you know, other things I would have liked to have in it, of course there are right. I would have liked to have a closer link with biodiversity and so on I would have liked to have had a clear price on target pertaining to Article 6 and accurate language around circularity but look, it is what it is. So no, it doesn't hamper I would say, but it doesn't explicitly pronounce itself on the opportunities for CO2 reductions by bringing about a circular economy, and by looking at the entire supply chain. And that is what but what you could say that there are many other dimensions here that the Paris agreement doesn't doesn't deal with. And it is for science then to raise to raise this and it is for science and to say well look in renewables are these and these and these opportunities, and to bring them to the four because the Paris agreement also doesn't tell you which renewable sector, etc. No one doesn't tell you about which which recycle which circularity sec which sector to if we were to bring it into circularity will be give you the biggest bang for the buck. I think we need to take the Paris as the as the line of sight for where we have to reach and then it is for us then to analyze and look at the entire economy and say for this country for that sector, these are the kind of commitments that we need to make. I have quite a specific question from Deirdre Lane. She asks, where do you see wool as a non plastic solution in fashion in insulation and reviving rural economies. It's currently being wasted globally. So wool wool and cotton and other materials. So, I mean, obviously, we should not be wasting textiles. And this is clear and we should not be mixing synthetics with cottons and we really need to think about just like we recycling paper and plastic we need to think about this. So I don't know enough about wool to have a specific point here but what I can say is that we should really once things are in the economy we're doing today is we're taking stuff out of the environment. We're putting into the economy that is a good thing it creates jobs opportunities makes wheels go around. And when we're done with it we just got it as waste back into the environment that is no longer an option. It needs to stay in the economy. And that's sort of the bottom line here that we need to think about and textiles play an important role as to a number of other raw materials as to another number of materials. In your talk you did emphasize the importance does the impact of the textiles industry indeed. The industry that is my where my own background lies the construction industry, you mean you refer to that as well. It's responsible of course for a very substantial part of the raw materials extracted from from the trust of our Earth. And yet it's really seems internationally quite an early stage in even even having the necessary information let alone take then moving on to take the necessary decisions, but in the information on, for instance, the life cycle of the of the impacts of the materials being used. So that designers and constructors and so on could take the necessary decisions. You absolutely spot on and I mean this is your field of expertise. We are you know, we've done a number of studies through the IRP the international resources panel that we're proud to host and here we emphasize the sort of weight of cities I mean what is that there was actually the communication we came out with that discusses a weight of cities in terms of climate and resource impact and and the weight of industry and the more we can construct with such a with with with with the with a circularity in mind obviously the much better we will be off as a global community. I have a question from a postgraduate student in India, Mar Braav. He says thank you for your insightful talk. I'm interested to know your thoughts on whether you think that the circular economy is conceived the same way in developed and developing countries. Can we have a global uniform approach across economies, or is circular economy to be viewed as a privilege. I'm glad that that my brother asks this question, because it is a question to be responded to. I think in a number of countries there's greater comfort with speaking with sustainable consumption and production, which is the title of the SDG 12, as opposed to circularity because in a number of countries we have distinct under consumption. We have 800 million people going to Hungary, we have 1.3 billion people live in abject poverty. And so the sense that the growth model that in the West was sort of take, make and waste might still be the linear model might still be the best way it is not however the best way, because the job opportunities that are available in circularity, the opportunities for long term competitiveness that are available from circularity are very real, but we need to understand that poorer countries have an opportunity maybe to leapfrog across a polluting age and not to have to go through that cost of the cleanup that wealthy countries have had to do to do. And moreover, at a time where overall population we are soon 8 billion people is such that what we will waste is so much more than what we did 100 years ago. So the option of just wasting and living with our waste and assuming that we can be healthy is a mirage. And so it is a conversation because global equity has to be part of it and that means also global trade rules, understanding the full cost, price on carbon, these dimensions need to be part and parcel of it because otherwise, and obviously living up to the promise of climate finance, $100 billion per year by 2020. These are part and parcel of the solution that need to be part of the global equity question. I think it probably has to be our last question, but it seems to me to be a really key issue raised by a professor at Trinity College Dublin, Claire Laude. She asks, how do you convince individuals that their individual personal actions, for example, not switching your engine off when waiting for your kids to come out of school, have a global impact. The message does not seem to get through Claire says. You know, there, I mean, thank you to for that question, because therein lies the understanding of individual responsibility. The world is made up of these seven point what have you billion people. And each one of us has a footprint and you and I, we have a footprint that is massively bigger than that person in Bhutan. And so, or in Kenya, so, and, and we want to, we want to understand that we want to arrive at 1.5. The kind of footprint that we have truly matters. I think what what we have understood is that just conveying the numbers, just conveying the facts and the science is not enough we need to hit with the heart. Maybe, you know, your children will probably tell you before you do it, because kids get it, or maybe the faith communities will tell you about sustainability so it is that people like myself who are in this environmental community need to understand that it is when others often you hear the truth comes from the child or the truth comes, or the persuasion comes from communities, the arts, the music industry, or, or, or elsewhere. I think it's very hard. We are now heading into COP 26. That means that it's more than a quarter of a century, where we have not agreed to do what we know we needed to do. And the science was clear 26 years ago and actually it's 27 because we skipped 2020. The science was clear 27 years ago, and it is clearer every year, and yet we have not done it. It is not about the science. It is about ensuring that there is political leadership that this is that the communication is consistent, and that it is not taking hostage by political posturing. This is the only, the only path we can walk in terms of the future, circularity, sustainability, climate action, and protecting nature, preventing pollution through, through sustainable consumption and production is the only way forward. This is the only way that we can ensure intergenerational equity. And so I'll stop here but very much thinking for for that last question, which sort of allowed me to wrap it up here. Really, I think you have brought things together and it really strikes home when, in our own experience, certainly here we've seen this how the the schools, the school children coming back from projects and from exposures that they've experienced in schools can be the drivers for change in in the family in in shaming the parents in. So you've tackled an enormous topic today, and you've tackled in a really elegant fashion. We are very much in your in your debt to Inger Anderson. So on behalf of the IIA and I think the EPA as well, and of the several hundred people who have been party to this discussion. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you.