 Honorable Deputy Prime Minister, Honorable Secretary, through the two of you, I would like to thank the government of Nepal for hosting this very important conference. Your presence here today really denotes the importance of this topic, or Nepal, for this entire region and for all LDCs. I would also like to join Tamila in thanking the array of co-sponsors. I would just like to change her invitation and say, I would like to see more co-sponsors at CB9, so all of these plus four, who will actually be joining these efforts as we move forward. I would very much also like to thank the distinguished friends who have been so hardworking day and night, day and night, from the clean energy in Nepal. Thank you very much for your hard work to organize this. And most especially, most especially, I would like to thank Malin and Atin, whose vision years ago has led to this. Nobody was thinking about community-based adaptation. Actually, many of the communities were doing community-based adaptation because they don't have any other options. But nobody was thinking about how to strategically focus policy, financing, and politics on community-based adaptation. And it was the extraordinary vision of these two gentlemen who has led to this. So I would like to call for a very warm applause for them. So this particular eighth conference is focused on financing for CBA. So let me address some of those issues. And in particular, I would like to address them from the lens of the Kathmandu Declaration, which I very much welcome. It seems to me that the bottom line with the Kathmandu Declaration has the potential to do and I'm sure will, is basically a two-prong approach. I would call it a bottom-up education and a top-down facilitation. So what do I mean by that? It seems to me that what the Kathmandu Declaration through all of your work is calling for is to really focus on the experience and on all of the knowledge that already exists here in this room and beyond on the importance, not just the importance of community-based adaptation, but on its cost effectiveness. Because dollar for input, dollar for effect, dollar for welfare, there is no better ratio of cost effectiveness than community-based adaptation. And how to do that, you are the experts. So it seems to me that one of the very important things that is being done here is this bottom-up education that comes from your experience, from your field expertise, you who are on the front lines of CBA to really be able to inform the levels above you as to the cost effectiveness and the importance and the urgency of community-based adaptation. And there, as we have all done already, but I would like once again to acknowledge Nepal's leadership, both in its creation of the concept and application of LAPAS, as well as on its determinations for the 80% to go to community-based adaptation. That at the national level. But it seems to me the Kathmandu delegation is also serving as a bottom-up education for the international level, where I have the honor of working. And there my sense is that under the UN and CCC we have the adaptation fund, we have the LBC fund, we have the Jeff, the World Bank Hazards Fund. I question whether we're using those funds as quickly as we should. Here's the deal. We shouldn't be waiting for money to go in here in the case of the adaptation fund, thank heavens. There is already the waiting list. That should be what we're doing with all of those other funds. We have funds sitting there that are not being used by the LBC. We can't afford that. We can't afford it, A, because their community is waiting for this funding, but also because we can't give the false impression that that funding is not urgent, necessary, and critical. So we have to make a better use of the funding that is there, use it quickly, use it effectively, use it in a transparent manner in a way that inspires confidence from the donors to continue funding because the funding that is there is pathetically insufficient, but that which is there needs to be used quickly, effectively, and drastically. And there's another reason why it is important to use those funds, A, because of the projects that they will actually fund, but from a strategic long-term view, because it is the use of those funds, it is the allocation of those funds, it is the successful implementation of those funds that is the learning ground for the much larger funds that will come through the green climate fund. The use of those funds that already exists now is where we will all learn how is the green climate fund going to do it bigger and better, but they can't do it bigger or better without learning from the experience of the existing funds. So both because the communities need, but also because of the learning opportunity for the GF, absolutely critical to be using those funds. Now, I have a particular bent in life which is once I'm convinced that it's something that's a good idea, my mind immediately goes to how are we gonna get it done, and not tomorrow, but yesterday, slightly impatient. So I have two entry points. Community-based adaptation, I would say, is at a level of awareness among you, but hasn't gone up to a level of awareness that it should. So I have two entry points that I would like to suggest to get community-based adaptation all the way to the level of recognition and acknowledgement and finance that it should get to. My first suggestion, my first entry point is, all the countries in which you work, every single one, is working on its next. Ensure that the NAPs are actually integrating the concept of community-based adaptation. The NAPs are going to be the entry point for the GCF. The NAPs are going to be the entry point for a lot of policy-making under the UNEDF, the CCC. The NAPs are going to be the entry point for many bilateral agencies. So it is very critical that CBA is very well cemented, grounded, and acknowledged in every single one of the NAPs that you're all working on. My second entry point, which is not no longer at the national level, such as NAPs, but rather for the international level, is let us ensure that in the adaptation framework that we are putting together for the Lima and Paris package, that we also have a very explicit acknowledgement of community-based adaptation. And the reason why that is important is because it is not unknown that bilateral agencies, multilateral agencies, in fact, even some national governments, take their cues from the international policy decisions. So think of it, the international policy regime as sort of the director of an orchestra where all the different musical instruments are looking up to see, okay, where are we now? How do we take our cue? That is the value of the international regime. That is the value of the international policy framework. That everyone will be looking there to take their cues and then implement it at the levels in which are actually directly supportive of you. Now, my last point is something that I'm very grateful to have been for bringing up, which is you have been focusing here absolutely justified on adaptation. But I also want to remind you, as has Aditya, that while we use our left hand and our left foot to press for adaptation, funding and policy support all the way through Lima and through Paris, we need to use our right hand and our right foot to press for very rapid mitigation from the high Canadian countries. I think it has already reminded us. And to think of it visually, if we don't get accelerated mitigation, it's going to be like trying to fill, as I told some friends yesterday at lunch, trying to fill a glass with water so that the glass has a hole in the body. So you can fill it and you can fill it because we're never going to be able to reach a full glass. That is the relationship between mitigation and adaptation. And we must, although it is very justified that we focus exclusively on adaptation because that is the urgency, we have the responsibility to act both for the immediate as well as for the mid and long term needs. And with respect to immediate and with respect to medium and long term needs, we must press for accelerated mitigation from the high Canadian countries, which means, which means global peaking of emissions over the next six to 10 years. That is a map of that. And it means carbon neutrality world over in the second half of the century. Established by the ICCC. That is a transformation, ladies and gentlemen, that humanity has never undertaken. That is a transformation that not only has to be undertaken, but it has to be undertaken within the time period because otherwise the cost of adaptation will exponentially rise to the point where adaptation is not only extremely difficult but perhaps will be even possible. Yesterday I had the pleasure of spending a little time with some youth here in Nepal. And while I was with them, the spirit of what came from them reminded me of a fantastic evening that I spent with some youth in Durban during that talk where at the end of the session, they sang this beautiful song, which in honor of you, I will not sing because I do not have a singing voice, but I will tell you the words. And the words were, do more, do more, do more. And when you have done everything you could, do more. And that has stayed with me since Durban because there is no other way to do this. That is the way, truth from the mouth of babes, right? That is the way to do this. Ladies and gentlemen, we are the first generation that knows the effects of how we have been living our lives in this planet. My parents didn't know, my grandparents didn't know. We are the first generation that knows. That knowledge of care is a huge responsibility. A huge responsibility. Because we're the first generation to know, we have to be the generation to face this. And yes, we have to learn from our failures. And the reason why we have to learn from our failures is because we cannot fail the next generation. In particular, we cannot fail the next generation in most global countries. Ladies and gentlemen, there is no doubt that the Lima and Paris Agreement, which will be a package of difficulties, but that package will be judged by history and by your children and my children, your grandchildren and my grandchildren. Not on how much it took us to agree to it, not on how many pages it has, not on how many chapters, not on how did we conjugate the verb or did we have a comma here or a comma there? It is gonna be judged on one thing only. Did it effectively protect the welfare of the most vulnerable population of the world? That is our joint task and I thank you for your work.