 I'd like to now welcome the rest of our panel for Anders Sturresson, he's a special advisor to the Swedish Ministry of Environment. He was also Sweden's lead climate negotiator until 2010 and until last fall was coordinator of Sweden's Environment Advisory Council, wherever you'd like. And then I would like to invite Björn Ola Linné. He is professor in environmental change at the Center for Climate Science and Policy Research at Linn-Schöpping University and he has done quite a bit of work on the role of non-state actors in international climate policy, so that should be an interesting conversation about the action agenda. And then I would like to invite my colleague Sivan Kartha. He is a senior scientist at SEI's US Center. But he does not have a table. Oh, we have to somehow arrange, I'm sorry, I need to put you two, there's swan mics for all of you. Perhaps I can go. I don't think so. I have a microphone. And last, I'd like to invite Harro van Assaut. He's a senior research fellow in our Oxford Center and a huge climate policy geek. Just so you know, we will try to say if Katja here helps me keep time properly, I will save some time for questions from the audience. So if you have questions, please do take note of them. We will try to accommodate as many as we can. So is everybody ready? So the first question I want to ask is, as has already been mentioned, there are negotiations happening right now in Bonn to try to whittle that negotiating text down into something reasonable. And I'm wondering, what are the one or two issues that you think are the most important to address right now to make this agreement viable? And I don't know, let's begin from the end, Sivan. Thank you. There are a lot of important issues to address. I think we can't expect they will all be addressed in Paris. But if there's one overarching thing that I think is absolutely important, in fact, vital to the survival, really, of the climate regime, it's that the discussions, the negotiations and the actual outcome in Paris is not and does not even seem to be a mitigation focused agreement. Climate change is much more than just mitigation. It's mitigation, it's adaptation, it's the financial and technological support. And if developing countries in particular see it to be mitigation focused, it will be perceived as neglecting their concerns, which are primarily development focused. So as Johan invoked at the beginning of the conversation, there is a tension between environment development. They can both be addressed in a climate agreement. There isn't a trade-off, they're not mutually exclusive. But if the development concerns, which in the climate context are adaptation and financial technology support, are not addressed, then it could be very damaging, it could be toxic to the process. Thank you. Bernola? Well, the two issues, I think, are clarity and finance. There is, yesterday Brazil said that we have a long list on what we are intending to do, but not who should do what. So many developing countries, including Brazil, are now criticizing the process for lacking clarity on how we differentiate between commitments. And of course, that can be seen as a natural process when we have this bottom-up process with INDCs. So but the finance issues will clearly be an important issue to have more clarity on what you raised here. Who will deliver what to the, first of all, the capitalization of the Green Climate Fund. But then also, how do we reflect the equity issues? There will still be demand for that, even though we build this bottom-up for sure. And I think the bond negotiations need some clarity there to move forward. You Haru? Right. So in addition to a lot of the substantive issues that Shivana and Bernola already raised, I would raise two issues of procedure and process, going in the lead up to Paris. I think the first aspect of the process, and of course, I'm sure that the Ambassador LeBouche and the French government is very aware of this, is about making sure that everyone feels included. And it's a tricky balance that needs to be found between on the one hand trying to make sure that everyone indeed does feel included, but at the same time keeping things manageable. But I think one of the risks, and this is going back to 2009 of Copenhagen, was that it was not seen as an inclusive process, not seen as a fair process by a number of countries. And I think that's one of the key things and one of the biggest issues that needs to be avoided. But also related to that, and again, the Copenhagen example is quite telling in that respect, is about expectations management. I think Copenhagen was in many ways it could be seen as a failure, but I think the biggest failure, I would say, is in terms of how the expectations were managed ahead of the meeting. So I think this is, I guess, what can be learned in the run up to Paris, how to make sure that we really manage the expectations, to make sure that the trust and the belief in the UNFCCC process as a whole is not lost. This does not mean that lower expectations means lower ambition. I think the ambition should be as high as possible. But we also need to be realistic about what is achievable in different countries at this stage. Great, thank you. And I can really agree with that, management of expectations. Since I have this experience from Copenhagen, I know how important it is, but yet how difficult it is, and it will be really a task for the French presidency, but for everyone, of course, because it is actually not possible to make everyone happy. You have to build up expectations, because, after all, Paris is a very important meeting, and that cannot be hidden somehow. But yet that will create expectations that will not be fulfilled completely, of course. The issue is not to overburden the expectations somehow, high expectations, but not too high. I guess that the job in Bonn now will be very much to work with texts, simplify texts, try to structure them in a way that is comprehensible to everybody. And that is perceived as a balance between all these issues that have been touched upon, because the trick in the climate change negotiations is often to create a balanced process that ultimately ends with a balanced result, of course. And if you go ahead on one issue, the stakeholders of other issues will definitely halt the process. So the balance will probably be very important. Of course, we all wish that some issues could be resolved before, or more or less resolved before Paris. I don't know if that's possible. I think it is at least possible to simplify the text and try to distill them, and try to focus the political discussion in the process before Paris to the important issues. And if that is possible, I can really congratulate the French presidency, I'm not saying. So you have absolutely nothing to take care of. You can just go on vacation now. Yes, absolutely. No, I agree with Anders. And it's really a technical answer, but the real challenge and the real target for Bonn is to reduce the text. We have two weeks. The two co-chairs of the presidents have decided to make two readings of the text. They will be held by 11 facilitators from 11 different countries, because they don't have enough hours in the day during these two weeks to deal with this extraordinary difficult to have 195 delegation agree on drafting the text. So this is the first challenge. But the second one, of course, it's linked to trust. If you don't have trust between the parties, you won't arrive to anything, because you know how it is. You can have a blockage at the start of the negotiation, and you stand two or three days blocked, and nothing happens. So you need to create a good mood. So yes, work long hours with facilitators, creating a feeling of trust. And to have trust, you have to deal with differentiation and balance between adaptation and mitigation, as was said, and finance. So everything is linked. You need that to create trust. How do you make sure that, Ambassador, how do you make sure that developing countries, in particular, given that there is so much work to do? And some delegations from the EU or from the United States or so are very large groups, but developing countries have far fewer people there. How do you make sure that everybody can be at the table about every part of the text? Well, that's why you have groupings in the system. You have groupings of the G77, the LDCs, but also geographical groupings, for example, ALAC, or the Bolivarian country for Latin American. The EU, the African country, are really working together, and they have collaboration. And that's why in this informal meeting, we have both big countries, but also representative of these different groupings. So yes, of course, they don't have the same capacity. There are systems and funding to help them. For example, for INDC, I take the example of France, not to boast, because many countries are doing that. But the French development agencies opened a fund to help African countries mainly table their INDC, because it's technically quite a work to prepare an INDC. So we have also this technical assistance system. We have every reason to believe that no matter how wonderfully this turns out, we will not be at two degrees, that more ambition will still have to be added somehow, and that more work will need to be done after Paris. So I want to ask you all, how do we make an imperfect agreement work? What do you think are sort of the most important things that have to happen after Paris? And we'll just start again from. Yeah, as Harold said, we can't have expectations that are too high. The ambition won't be where we'd like to be. What we don't want to have happen is what unfortunately did happen in Copenhagen, which is that pledges that ended up being fairly weak were listed, and then they were basically locked in. And that's what we're stuck with. We're scrambling. We're trying to make up for lost time and deepen the efforts that our countries are doing before 2020. But the pledges that were put on the table and pretty much graven in stone is basically what countries are shooting toward. So what we need in Paris are some footholds to steadily increase ambition, to make sure that the numbers that are put on the table for 2025, 2030, aren't locked in. So what could those footholds look like? One thing we need, I think, is that we can't have countries signaling that these pledges are their bottom line and they'll go no further. We have to have countries signaling some flexibility. Currently, unfortunately, there are some countries that are saying, no, no, this is it. Take it or leave it. Another thing we need, I think, is a credible process for effective international collaboration. We need a process whereby developing countries can come forward with credible proposals for mitigation activity, adaptation activity, and those are matched with the financial and technological support from developed countries. Something that's incremental and progressive and that builds learning and builds trust and creates the institutions and proves those institutions and refines them. Without that, we'll just have continued sort of high-level abstract demands for financial and technological support that are very difficult politically for developed countries to come forward and meet. Yeah, this is a great question. This is what it's all about because it's not so important what we agree on in Paris. We can develop on that later, I think. But actually what will happen after Paris, no matter how the agreement, or even if we have an agreement, is the crucial thing. And there is then three things. First of all, the short-term action. What we will do until 2020 to not lose momentum. So that is the first thing. And here, you who are gathered here today have a lot to do, I guess, especially ACI, on how to incentivize and share best practices and so on and also to use the finance that will be available for natural appropriate mitigation actions and so on to get some momentum quickly, even before the implementation phase starts at 2020. For instance, there was a very interesting meeting in Bonn yesterday called the Technical Expert Meeting on Renewable Energy Supply, where best practices were shared and ideas on how to actually that could work in different economies and so on. As an example, what we can do in the short-term. Then the tricky thing is to implement an agreement. So what will happen with these grand strategies that are outlined in the INDCs? They are supposed to be implementable. We have a lot of strategies, not the least in developing countries, like LU, emission development strategies and so on. The trick is then to see how these can be implemented. And I think the broad palette of INDCs that we would see, some of them will be very concrete. We have good examples how you can work with implementation in different countries. Unfortunately, the EU is very vague there. This is one of my criticisms to the EU. Maybe we can get a reply on that. People are more into the EU. But they're very vague. But other countries, I think, like the EU, it's more concrete. The US is more concrete. Good for you guys. That is one thing. And then, as you mentioned, then how we would ratchet up this INDCs in the years to come. And I hope it will be five years, INDCs, so we will have a process that these ambitions can be ratcheted up and start the discussion right away afterwards. Great. Before I let Haro go, I should encourage you all to read Haro's really great paper on assessment and review that includes a lot about, basically, how assessment and review can help ratchet up ambition of INDCs. And now that I stole your thunder, please go ahead. That's right. I think one of the risk with these discussions, of course, is also to make clear the jargon that we use in UNIFCCC processes as much as possible. So again, INDCs, as Ambassador LaPouche was mentioning, it's basically the national pledges, the national contributions put forward under the UNIFCCC context. I'm not going to add much more to what Bjorn Ola has said. Maybe one point that I can add is beyond ratcheting up, we also have to very much avoid ratcheting down. So and already, there's quite a high level of agreement among parties in the UNIFCCC process that whatever is put forward in the next round, in the next cycle, is actually more ambitious than in the last round. I have a feeling that there might still be some pushback against the provision like this in Paris but also beyond. But I do think that such provision, which just gives a signal, whatever we're going to do, we're only going to be more ambitious over time. It's going to be incredibly important in terms of providing a signal to civil society, to business actors, and you name it. Well, I mean, it is clear that we need a process after Paris, that's for sure. But I would still like to underline the role of Paris because it's there we set the stage for this process very much. And I think one of the most important parts in setting the stage is actually to get contributions that, although not sufficient to reach the two degree target, will still be perceived as a major step forward, I think this is crucial because if that is not achieved, I think the whole mood will be bad afterwards and we have to recapitulate somehow the whole thing. So that is important. Besides that, I don't think I can add very much to what has already been said. So you don't expect the presidency to say that we won't reach the target consistent with plus two degree, but we have to accept that it is one of the possibilities, of course, when you see the contribution at that time. I would even say that many countries, more and more, that's always been the position of the small and vulnerable country, the islands, saying that two degrees too much and it should be 1.5 degrees. So the reality that we should have the best possible result, 1.5 would be better than two, but 2.5 would be better than three and so on. Having said that, Paris is important, as you said, because that would be the first series of commitment. This commitment, they have a horizon of 2025 or 2030, most of them, which means that after a world, there would be something. So it's just the first type of commitment. So the kind of architecture the delegations are thinking about is to have an agreement which is there to stay, which we don't want to renegotiate every five years, because it's too much work. And if we have a good agreement with good rules, it's there to stay and give the previsibility. But the commitment, which will be beside the agreement and the question of the legal nature of the link between the commitment and the agreement is one of the complex issues in the negotiation. But this commitment, they will have to be renewed. And so we have a debate on the cycles. Should it be a cycle of five years, 10 years and so on? Do you personally like five years? Frankly, I don't have any liking. It's for the negotiators to discuss that. Again, we have the presidency. The presidency is not there to say, you do that, you do that. We want them, the only thing we say that we want the most ambitious, the widest and the most binding agreement. And final point, there is also the debate on the question of a long-term goal. Because we have a long-term goal in term of degree, which is plus two degrees. But shouldn't we try to translate it into a reduction of GAG in the long term? And you have discussion on whether in Paris, also perhaps we could have a 2050 target of between minus 40 and 70% reduction of GAG. And even perhaps in 2017, a zero net emission target. So you see the architecture ideally would be to have a long-term target, an agreement and then cycle with mechanism to ratchet up as possible, but at least not to backslide on the commitment. So this is part of the negotiation now, you know, for Paris. Backsliding is already in the text right now. Do you think it's fairly certain that it will stay? No backsliding, I mean. That's the objective, yes, of course. We are encoding that you can backslide. Anders, you had wanted to... Yes, something that I think is extremely important from Paris is actually a kind of system for transparency and accountability because that will be important for the process that will follow on. Of course, nations might be able to take on ambitious targets and commitments or whatever you call it, but in the context of the general kind of achievement by the global community, I think this is key actually. If you feel that you're a part of a collective effort and that you can rely on the other parties here, and this is extremely important. And so you've got the kind of positive circle here where you can actually somehow almost create a kind of competition between nations, but you cannot do that if they do not trust each other. Does anybody wanna talk a little bit about how do you build that trust? Anyone? I can chip in, I guess. I think one of the things that worried me in last December in Lima when there was a decision adopted about reviewing and basically enhancing accountability about mitigation before Paris. And at that stage, nothing much was adopted. It was quite difficult to get any process in place at that stage. And my worry would be that if this is replicated in Paris and if it's also replicated in, let's say, future negotiations where there's no strong accountability mechanisms what Anders was already referring to, I think that would significantly weaken the Paris Agreement in terms of implementing it. It would make it less feasible for domestic stakeholders to hold their own governments to account. And over time, I think it's gonna be more difficult to achieve the goals that we have in mind for the different countries. So I would see this as incredibly important. So I have a trick question. Is there such a thing as an agreement not worth signing? And what would make it not worth signing? Is there an agreement not worth signing? I think there is a case in the history of the COP where there was no conclusion. It was the Hague, I don't remember in which year. I'm not quite sure. The Hague, yes. Don't mention the Hague, as we say. Our analysis is that, we don't know, of course, but we are pretty optimistic on the fact that we will have an agreement because politically, the signals we get from all the participants, and including the biggest emitter and the big country, but not only them, is that we really want an agreement. I mean, there is an awareness of the risk of the urgency and I won't detail every country, but from China to India to the US. I mean, the statements are very clear. So politically we want an agreement, but after each country, it's interest in the negotiation and it's quite legitimate that they defend also their interest. So the agreement should be there. The question is the content and the agreement, you know? As you say, will the agreement itself be good, especially on transparency, which is clear? MRV, on adaptation, on finance, and the level of the ANDC. So, of course, we need to sign an agreement. I can't tell you that we can contemplate the idea of a failure in Paris where we would leave without anything because that would create a kind of post-COP depression for the entire system that would definitely be negative. So your question is, is any agreement is better than no agreement? You cannot answer that. You have to see the agreement when we'll be there. Andres, you want to turn in? Yeah, well, there is always a bottom line. However, and perhaps fortunately, that bottom line is seldom well-defined for different parties. But the thing is that some of the parties will have to actually go below its bottom lines. That's how a successful agreement is reached. So it's quite, I think it's quite constructive to be vague about the bottom line and not speculate too much about it in beforehand. So I am an American and most of you, or almost all of you are Europeans. The US position has been that this agreement cannot be binding. The EU says it should be binding. How important is it for this agreement to be binding in your opinion? And I'll let anyone answer who would like to participate. I can perhaps start off. Well, I mean, for the EU, the bindingness is a key issue, of course. The next question is, what do we mean by binding? And then again, we go back to the issue of accountability and transparency, et cetera, et cetera. All these issues are linked to each other. The totality needs to be sufficiently clear and credible for all parties. And the bindingness is one part of that. I think it will be difficult to achieve something that reminds us of the Kyoto Protocol with its bindingness because, as you said, the United States will probably, and not only the United States, by the way, will definitely oppose to that. But we need a certain degree of bindingness and I hope that the parties will be able to, in their wisdom, define that in a good way. Harro, I know this is an issue of interest to you. So as an international lawyer, I cannot say that the bindingness does not matter. That this is basically how I've been trained and how I've been indoctrinated, I would say. At the same time, of course, I understand the realities. And I think I can only agree with what Anders is saying. It's legal form can be important, but it's only one way of conveying the credibility of what countries are pledging, of what countries are doing. So it can be important for civil society, for sure. It can be important for business actors to get a signal that, indeed, countries are serious about it, but it's not the only way of conveying the credibility of their commitments. So I think that would be my first point. The other thing that is quite important to get clear is that a legally binding deal, I'm expecting a legally binding deal, but I do not expect necessarily legally binding targets. So the contributions to INDCs that we've been talking about, I do not necessarily expect them to be legally binding, especially because some countries, including the United States, would have significant difficulties in getting us through their domestic systems. All right, another issue that has been brought up and that I think is very important to a lot of parties is finance. And the ambassador mentioned that in his introduction. I'm wondering how important is finance and what exactly do we need? Or I mean, I don't know that we can specify in complete detail, but what is a must-have here on finance to make this agreement viable? Sivin, you look interested in answering that, but ambassador too, so... I'm actually interested in a refill. I talk a lot. You can go first. If you want a message. Well, but to repeat what I've said, finance is definitely very important. The green climate fund was the first result and if we hadn't been able to create this GCF, frankly, it would have been a big problem on the road to Paris. So it's there. No, it has to be more than operational. It has to create, to launch projects. Then we need to give reassurances on the $100 billion, which is a complex negotiation. Maybe it in Warsaw, in Lima, we need some intermediary target for 2017, 2018 and so on. But it's more than that, you know? And it's there the link with the action agenda. What we need, and we have started to do that is to mobilize the actors of private finance, you know? So as to be credible when we say that we want to shift the fundings from the carbon project to the non-carbon project. And you have many initiatives, including in this country with pension fund, AP4 and so on. And they work together to send this kind of signal. Because the money is there, you know? It's not a question of having the money in the world for investment, it's there. The question is to shift it from carbon to non-carbon project. So public money, but also a lot of private money. A lot of development money, I mean, all the national agency, the AFD in France, CIDA in Sweden, all of them. But also the World Bank, the regional bank, are having clear program to shift their money from carbon to non-carbon. So it's a mix of all that. But we need to convince the developing country that they will get the money for mitigation and even more for adaptation, perhaps. Yeah, I think it is the only thing I think that can risk that we will not have a deal in Paris is if we can't have a credible money on the table to capitalize the Green Climate Fund and other financing mechanisms. That is the primary way also to see that we reflect differentiating responsibilities. We can't do that for the INDCs, we can put some pressure on it. And personally, I think it would be extremely important that we include also financing commitments in the INDCs. This was one of the hot topics in Lima, where I know the EU had a different position in the US. But I think that would have been something, would have been a very strong signal because when we talk about building trust, is it one thing that developing countries remember is all the promises of overseas development aids and the little fulfillment that has been. So it's easy to promise, but the track record is not good. So transparency, but also review mechanisms for the financing, I think is essential for a successful and ambitious Paris Agreement. Anders? I mean, it's clear that financing will be pivotal, of course, and that a hundred billion dollars is a substantial chunk of money, really, of course. But still I have to allow myself a little reflection that about six trillion dollars are invested each year, or should be invested each year in things like energy, land use, urban development, each year, and it's the direction of these investments that will really decide our future. And of course, these hundred billions that we will manage within the context of the climate change convention will be important. Perhaps they can have a very important catalyzing effect on other larger money, but we shouldn't, I think it is a problem for the climate change negotiations that they are bogged down into fairly small issues, even though, of course, a hundred billion dollars is a large chunk of money, but still six trillion. I mean, during the next coming 40 or 50 years or so, humanity has to build as much city as we have built so far in our whole history. That's the challenge, and that's what we are going to measure against. Thank you. Sorry, just one word. I think it's very important to take this occasion to relaunch the debate on innovative financing. You know, that's something which is very dear to the heart of France, or feeling that if you want to find public money for the post-2015 goals, plus for fighting climate change, the national budget probably won't be enough. So we need additional innovative financing. You know, we have made some proposals, including in the EU on a tax on international financial transaction. It's a debate that has been developing for decades, but I think it's very much linked to also the climate change debate. So I have a couple more questions I want to ask you. Actually, I could ask you about 20 questions, but I have about two that I'm going to discipline myself down to, but I also wanted to encourage the audience. If you are interested in asking a question, I don't know where my colleague Anna went. She's there. Make sure that she gets your attention, because she is the master of the microphones, and she will make sure that you get a microphone. We probably won't be able to take a lot of questions, and it will be very important for people to keep their questions short, but we will try to accommodate as many as we can. Oh, okay, anyway, raise your hand, and somebody will find you. But anyway, I want to ask Sivan very directly, how important is it to address equity explicitly in this agreement? Bless you, Marion. That's a topic near and dear to my heart. And what I'd say is that, oh, equity will be addressed explicitly. There's no question about that. We can have full confidence. The question is, is it going to be, once again, the contentious, heated, divisive, rote invocations of abstract equity principles, common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, or is it going to be something productive? Can it be something productive? And I would sort of turn the question around and say, can we have an agreement? Can we have an effective agreement if we don't have a productive discussion about equity? One of the things that's inescapably really part of the structure of the climate problem is that it is a global commons problem, and commons problems require cooperative solutions. None of us can solve our own climate problem by reducing our own individual emissions. We need to somehow induce reciprocal action in other countries, like Anders Tortasen said. We need some kind of a virtuous cycle of getting countries to together step forward and take deeper and deeper and more ambitious actions. So I think we have to have some kind of discussion, some kind of explicit discussion, some kind of productive discussion. It's not a discussion that can happen just in the UNFCCC. It's not necessarily a discussion that needs to lead to a table of numbers and top-down allocations for countries, but we have to have a discussion linked to discussions about transparency and monitoring and a better understanding of what steps other countries are actually taking, what level of efforts are other countries actually putting forward. How does that compare to their responsibility and to their capability and to their other competing priority development needs? And only by that having that kind of discussion both within the international forum, but also domestically within civil society and within constituencies, within government can, I think, we'll be able to solve the problem. Thank you. Do we have anybody who's already, okay, can we? Okay, while we get to you, you will ask your question in a second, but I wanna ask you one more question and it is what role do initiatives outside of the UNFCCC have to play in building ambition before Paris and after Paris? And this is something I don't know if Ambassador, you'd like to touch on this. I know that I want your NOLA as well to provide some. I've already said a few words on that, so perhaps someone else would want, but. Okay, I start. Oh, that's great. Well, yeah, and this is fantastic because we had a failed agreement in Copenhagen and what has happened in Copenhagen. Millions and multitudes of initiatives around the world in cities, companies, countries doing things. So all this has happened without us having an agreement in place. I really want to see one in Paris. I think that will build momentum even further, but the important thing is this process that we have sort of the symbolic functions of the negotiations, which spurs all these initiatives, creates incentives, it's a meeting place, we share best practices. I think it's a fantastic development since Copenhagen. We were very depressed after Copenhagen. I think we come a long way and all that has happened outside. A lot of it has happened outside the UNFCCC. It has happened outside countries. Countries have been important, but also outside countries. So all that we have seen so far, I would say, is a result of very much non-state actors in combination and in partnership with states. So imagine what will happen after Paris if we get a positive momentum from there. But that's why I said it's not so important what the agreement is. My answer to your question a while ago is there an agreement not worth having? No, because as long as we can have a process, seeing that there is a momentum in the process, it will spur all these initiatives and that creates hope, I think. How are we going to jump in? Just briefly, I agree with Bureau Laudat that the momentum and it's great. We have actions by cities, by companies, by civil society, and it's great to see all that mushrooming at that moment. And I think even more will happen in the run-up to Paris and in Paris. Just one note of caution. And if we go back to 2002, similar process, in this case it was Johannesburg, a lot of type II public-private partnerships were initiated. And a few years down the line, some of these have performed quite well, but others were not really performing that well. Some websites didn't even exist anymore. Basically, whole initiatives disappeared. The point that I'm trying to make is, yes, we're holding governments and the Union of Triple C to quite high standards of what it needs to achieve. While I would not suggest to hold all this non-state action to the same standards, it's important that we monitor and follow what is happening. The commitments at the Ban Ki-moon Summit, are they actually being followed up on? How well will they function a few years down the line? So we need to think about what is happening there as well. Great, thank you. Sir? Peter Pert from the European Commission, joint research center. So I'm not a policymaker, I'm a scientist who's advising policy. A very simple question, particularly to the ambassador and the French presidency. Have you, I like the concept of late lessons, that you go back and see in old processes what failed and how one can learn from what failed in the old. Have you gone back to the Copenhagen process and analyzed in detail and see what didn't work there? Why didn't Copenhagen meet the big expectations we had for Copenhagen in 2010? And how have you adjusted your current process for Paris so not to make the same mistakes again? Thank you for the question. The answer is yes. Immediately when we have decided to be a candidate, and we were the only candidate to host the COP 21, by the way, it was the easiest diplomatic victory in our history. But of course, yes, we studied what happened and at that time I was negotiator and we went to Denmark and we went to Mexico also because as you know, you cannot discuss Copenhagen without discussing Cancun. And we don't have time to discuss Copenhagen. You have hundreds of books which have been written by the people who took part in that. So I think it's very well known. But we don't have this black and white vision of Copenhagen. We don't consider Copenhagen to be a complete failure. There were many positive things from Copenhagen, the fact that all the emerging countries for the first time tabled some voluntary commitment. So perhaps there were purely voluntary, there were very different, but it was politically a very strong signal. But of course, it was more the global impression that people had when they saw the head of state the last days of the summit that creating the feeling of a failure. And afterwards, we worked a lot with the Mexican team to see how they put back the process on track before Cancun. And the answer was informal meetings, a lot of informal meeting, reduced format, 40 people, but open and transparent. Which mean we invite only the main participants, but if someone else want to come in, we invite him to. So to be sure that nobody feels rejected and neglected. And we make a report in the formal meeting on what we discussed in the informal meeting. And that's what we are trying to do at this moment. So I don't know if it will work. But yes, the main lesson of Copenhagen was first of all, don't, I don't know what the decision of my head of state will be. So I don't want to be premature, but the COP are ministerial meeting, which doesn't mean that we don't need the leaders at one stage, either before the COP into G20 or in ad hoc meeting, or at the beginning of the COP, but probably not the last three days of the COP to negotiate the text of 120 page, because it's a recipe probably for failure. So that's one of the lessons we took. And the second one is really be transparent and to have the trust of everybody. But if you want to be efficient, it means also to balance the formal and the informal meeting. Thank you, Ambassador. One more question, and that's all the time we have unfortunately. Okay, hi. My name is George DeHoyer. I'm with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I was at the embassy in Benin in West Africa. And this meeting is about bridging science and policy, and that's what we tried to support there. It was supporting a national water institute, but unfortunately due to a fraud case that we had, we had to stop our financing. And it shows how vulnerable support to national institutes can be. Nina had a very interesting conclusion, where she said we need to prioritize national monitoring over international reporting. And I think that's very important. You need to support national governments to make the decisions on climate change. They have to have information and they have to have policy advice at a national level. Now, how can you support that and how can you secure that such capacity develops? I think it's possible, but it needs international support. I think SEI could be a very important actor in that, coaching and securing quality of these national institutions as can similar institutes. In the Netherlands we also have a few. In order to enable that, I think it should be possible to finance such institutions directly. And there the term international or global public good comes into play, because you need to have a way of financing directly such institutions. And my proposal would be to you to discuss that option to see if such a concept could work in order to support these very bright national scientists to do their work for their national governments. Thank you very much. Unfortunately, rather than give you an opportunity to respond, I have to ask you to wrap up, because otherwise we will somehow be made to vaporize. But I wanted to ask you one final question as you say, as you finish. And it is, what is your greatest hope for these negotiations? So let's end on a positive note. And Sivan, would you like to start? Sure. I don't envy the negotiators. This is a very tough challenge for them. And a spectacular stunning success that impresses everyone isn't likely. So my greatest hope is that whatever happens in Paris, civil society stays energized, stays mobilized, because negotiators ultimately are operating within a very narrow latitude of what their constituents permit them to do. And what we need is a constituency, ultimately that's demanding much more ambitious climate action. So my greatest hope is that this is an opportunity for civil society to gain rather than lose energy. Great. Gernola? Well, it is that the intended nationally determined contribution will be detailed full of examples so that we can start to comparing and seeing what different countries choose as the best way forward as a platform for continued discussion. So I think it would be great if we have 195 countries with detailed plans on how they intend to tackle climate change and include that the rich countries specify their financial commitments for the capacity building that you just asked for, for example. So we'll answer that question as well. Thank you. Harro? I guess my greatest hope would be that Paris enables a shift of focus towards the action or the levels where the action is actually happening and primarily the national level to some extent also the non-state level, but it's allowing a shift of focus to a toward basically national level action and getting into more concrete detail of what is happening on the ground. Great. Thank you. Anders? I can of course only agree with what has been said already. A good deal of course and ambitious, et cetera. Maybe something beside this, which I think is extremely important and perhaps even, well, from now on, is that we get, we instill a kind of conviction, a feeling in the international community that it is doable, you know, that it is possible to reconcile the development with a steep, precipitous of lowered emissions, really. I think this would be something extremely important. So I'm very hopeful for the technological development that is going on right now. And perhaps, and this will perhaps be one of the beauties of a big international political process like this, that this can somehow, this technological development and the development of the civil society, et cetera, can somehow be transformed also into political action in Paris and onwards. Great, thank you. Ambassador? Well, there have been many references to the management of expectations. So I need to be cautious because the presidency really has to balance. We need to be ambitious, you know, that that's a role to push and to say we want the highest possible commitment before Paris and we want the best and the most ambitious text and so on. If not, we wouldn't play a role as presidency. If we just say, well, please negotiate and we'd wait for that. But at the same time, of course, we don't want after Paris the result is not exactly what we would all hope because it would be a compromise, you know. It's a consensus negotiation between 195 negotiations, a delegation. So it would be a compromise. The most ambitious possible compromise. But if we create too many expectations, of course, there could be a feeling of desperation in Paris. So my wish for Paris is that we have a result and a deal of which we can all collectively be proud of to have worked together, you know. And it's very important. And that would be a very important step forward and on the basis of this result that we could continue to build together for the future. The government and the civil society, the companies. I think that's the goal that we can all aspire to. Thank you very much. Thank you. Please give a big round of applause for him.