 Okay, welcome back. I think we'll get started as some people trickle in. So my name is Diane Archer. I'm a senior research fellow at SEI here in Bangkok. And I'm delighted to lead today a session looking at urban futures in a changing climate, focusing on the Mekong region. Today's session we'll start with a brief recorded presentation from a participant who unfortunately couldn't join us in person. And then we'll have a dialogue with our three in-person panelists and then some time for questions. So I'm sure you're very aware that the Mekong region is becoming increasingly urban over the coming decades. And so we need to prepare our towns and cities for both slow and rapid onset climate impacts. This has implications for things like provision of affordable housing, infrastructure, services, as well as health and well-being in cities. So we'll try and consider some of these issues to see how we can achieve more resilient cities that are also inclusive of everyone in the city. So to kick off our session, we have a recorded presentation from Dr. Jan Bin Wang who's based in Australia. He's a chief innovation officer at Water Sensitive Cities at Monash University where he is promoting multifunctional infrastructure and applies circular economy approaches to deliver water sensitive city visions. So let's start with that presentation. Thank you. The opportunity for me to share some of the climate resilient perspective in urban contexts. One other key message I'm trying to deliver today is that we all have to integrate social inclusion into the climatic response so that we can build a foundation for shared prosperity and leave no one behind. And one of the ways that we can go about doing that is to develop multifunctional public open space. And because it's multifunctional, it can deal with multiple climate scenarios and therefore deliver multiple benefits to the community. And why I made that point is because the climate change, it doesn't mean the old problems will simply go away. We still have to deal with water pollution, drought, scarcity, urban floods, river degradation and urban heat. And we don't want to create a one-dimensional solution because that will just shift the problems from one to another. For example, in the old days, the engineers tried to conquer lines, rivers, to improve the drainage efficiency but at a cost of looting biodiversity. So what we want to do is develop a holistic approach to deal with all these challenges because they all somehow relate to how we manage water in a city. And of course, with the introduction of climate change, things are going to exacerbate. For example, the high intensity rainfall will lead to more severe urban flooding. And we also can get company events. For example, in a sea level rise, could be coupled with coastal flooding and extended drought could be coupled with urban heat. On top of all of that, we have to deal with uncertainty because both drought and floods could occur in the same city and sometimes in the same year. So all of that is pointing towards a direction that is calling for a multifunctional infrastructure that is embedded in the public open space. So for the rest of this presentation, I'll simply refer that as a multifunctional public open space. You may wonder why a multifunctional public space will helplessly take social inclusion into the climate response. I'd like to draw your attention to this diagram proposed by Workman. He says that the most relevant stack of social inclusion can be clustered under three domains, the market, services, and a space. So if you think about our proposition of developing multifunctional public open space, well, it means that the multifunctionality will deliver a multiple ecosystem services and therefore benefits. And because it is within the public open space, it can ensure the services and the benefits will reach all communities. So all we need to do is to make sure the social inclusion is well-implemented through better design so that everyone can take part and participate in the society. So let me give you an example of what we mean by a multifunctional public open space. Here is a minimal version of that, which is an urban tripe heat in Melbourne. So how this work is that the tripe heat is actually suckin' down from the road surfaces and there's a cut opening down the side so that every time it rains, the stormwater generated from the road surface will flow into the tripe heat fit. The water get attenuated on the surface before the water slowly percolate downwards through the soil, through the root systems, before the clean water get picked up by the stormwater pipe. So in the process that basically we get a better and healthier tree roots, why it becomes every time it rains, the tree will get a drink, which we refer as a passive irrigation. And also the nutrients that is contained in the stormwater is going to be retained and recycled for the tree grows, nitrogen, phosphor, and so on. And once we get a better root system, we're going to get a much better canal piece. And if you line up the whole strip, which is such a tripe heat, we'll get a much better canopy shading and therefore micro-climate improvement in a series scale, that also improve anonymity. And basically, you know, those multiple benefits which is mentioned about is going to benefit all the communities live along the street or anyone walked along the street. And that was a simple example from Australia. So for the rest of this presentation, I'm going to walk you through a number of case studies in the developing country context. For example, China and Thailand to give you the confidence that the multifunctional part of my space can be built, it can be built really well. Here you'll see a civic plaza with constructed wetlands in the city of Kunjai in China. So what we have done in this project is to incorporate a range of constructed wetlands within this public plaza so that every time it rains, the plaza runoff actually flow into the wetland fist. Water get attenuated, water get treated before the clean water discharge in the nearby canal. And in the dry days, those wetlands is used to maintain a large ornamental pool, which you'll see on the top right to maintain water quality through recirculation, very much like a dialysis system so that there's no portable water required to support this water feature. Everything's done through service water. A really interesting in this project is that we have not developed an engineering solution, but rather we have created a very unique ecological landscape that blend well from the rest of the public space. As you can see here, the wetland turned out to be a mini-aquatic botanical garden and we're able to bring the biodiversity back into the city. So all the communities who access to this public plaza will benefit from a range of ecosystem services provided by this wetland. So there's an important message I'd like to pause and highlight, which is the climate resilience do not just focus on buildings. In fact, you should go beyond the buildings and look into the public open space because that's where the investment is gonna benefit the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in the society. And the beauty of this is the public space when it's contained in multifunctionalities they actually become completely scalable. We can do this from streetscape to the precinct scale and all the way to the city scale. So let me walk you through a third of your case study to demonstrate this point. So what you'll see here is Cunishon Forest Park. It's a 200 hectare park that used to be just a forest park with a large lakes in it. And the lakes used to be isolated from the rest of the city because they worried about pollution and contamination. What we have done to the project is to introduce a range of constructed wetlands into the park so that the wetland will be used to maintain the water quality in those lakes such that the lake can be reconnect back to the city river network. So it can participate in the large flood mitigation schemes because we know the water quality of the lake can be restored upon the dams. And the beauty of this is that we also work with the local landscape architects to introduce a very sophisticated network of pedestrian systems so that we bring people back to the nature capitals and everyone can get access to this beautiful forest and wetland park and enjoy their day-to-day lives. And a recent study by the Work Bank shows the benefit-cause ratio for the forest park is 2.7, which means that every dollar invested by the Cunishon Gama into the park can generate a $2.7 back in terms of economic benefits to the whole society. And what you'll see here is a multifunctional city corridor in the same city as Cunishon along a 40-kilometer-long elevated rain drop. We call this a gray, green and blue corridor where grades for traffic and grains for ecology in the landscape and blues for water. So how this work is that every time it rains, the water generated from the gray corridor will discharge into the wetlands within the green corridor first. The water get attenuated and treated before the clean water discharge into the blue corridor, which is the river. And during extreme flood events, the water level in the blue corridor start to rise. Now, in and out part of the green corridors to increase the flood attenuation capacity will also increase the flood-convince capacity of the city. And because the green corridor and the blue corridor is a linear, so every community is living in the vicinity. They can benefit from it either through a commute or through recreational use. So under the auspicious Austrian government, we have been applying the learnings that we gained in China and applied that to the Nikon regions. For example, this is one of the efforts we're trying to build climate resilience for the city of Ryan. As you can see, there's a very classic image of Ryan that's looking into a secondary street, very harsh and all concrete, no trees. And the city suffer from a combination of urban heat and flooding because of lack of drainage and then combined sewer or flows. So what we're proposed to do is to transform this harsh urban environment into a green Kenya, by popular lighting the streetscape with trade pays and storm water planted books. The hardest work is that the roof runoff will travel down through the downpipe but intercepted by the storm water planted books where water get attenuated, treated and harvest, recycle and to support the planters, which as part of the streetscape and many things. And then the street runoff will flow into the tripe, very much functioned as the Melbourne tripe that mentioned earlier. So the combination of this initiative will start to help reduce the combined sewer flows because we start to effectively separate storm water from the wastewater. And in doing so, the trees and the water box are passively regating and they start to dramatically influence the microclimate in this urban environment. And if we're smart enough, we can start to integrate a range of urban furnitures into the tripe and the water box, such as dining tables, chairs and benches to improve the amenities for the communities living in the vicinity. And then hopefully, you know, the government will build it one day. All right, so this is my last slide, which we're back to the city of Cunzhan looking at the Spam City demonstration park. So what the government have done is to transform what used to be underutilized a rubbish dumping ground underneath this electricity corridor into a very nice park. The park is designed to be floodable and there was a lot of water quality improvement systems in the park. More importantly, integrate a lot of interactive water features so that it starts to bring the amenities back to the nearby community. And what we see in this project is that it gives us a lot to think about when we talk about building urban resilience. We do not just focusing on the beautiful city centers but also looking into the marginal areas, those vulnerable groups, and give us a lot to think about where to start this process and how social inclusion play a role in the process so that we leave no one behind in this journey. So with that, I thank you very much for your time. And I wish you all the best in the panel discussion and the rest of the conference. Coburn Crop. Great. It was lovely to have that introduction and the city of Kunshan certainly looks like it's got some lovely parks and I think we can always do with more green space in our cities. So now we will shift to our panelists here. So I will first introduce them and then we'll work our way through a round of questions. So we have Mr Anuksai Pomalad, who is a freelance consultant on environment and social safeguarding, gender, climate change and DRR, and land management. And he currently works on regional land use planning, spatial analysis, and is the Lao PDR focal person with Rumble as an environmental specialist for the second strengthening higher education project at Savanaket University, new campus construction funded by the ADB. Beside him, we have Kun Somsook Buñabancar, chairperson of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights or ACHR, an organization working on urban poor housing development in Asia. Kun Somsook, it was actually my first boss. I worked at ACHR after my PhD. So it's great to have her back. And Kun Somsook was also the director of Community Organizations Development Institute, or CODY, from 2000 to 2008 here in Thailand, and is still the chairperson on CODY's National Slum Upgrading Committee. And finally, we have Ms Shom Tio, who is program manager of the ASEAN SDGs front runner cities program, which is one of ASEAN's flagship regional platforms supporting innovative bottom-up actions by green cities, reporting annually to ASEAN environmental ministers. Shom has spent over a decade managing grants, technical assistance and networking services for ASEAN's front runner cities. So we have a nice mixed panel here today. So I'll get us started. Firstly, with Kun Somsook. So Kun Somsook, you have spent many decades working with urban low-income community groups in the Mekong region, who are trying to improve their housing and access to services using their own funds and resources. How can governments continue to work with them better in this process? And is there a role for the private sector, do you think? Okay. Well, I will speak from my experience as the person who actually supports the work in Asia and in Thailand. In Asia, we use to support this urban community development process from the ground up, from the bottom up to link with the city and the other agency and to develop a citywide approach in the Asia countries as well as in Thailand. Thailand now we support the community, urban poor community or even rural community to work with the city and the world, the provincial government and so on. So to answer that question, I would say that in the process in which I work in the region as well as in the country, we look at the people as the center, the community as active actor. You see so many countries in the world where they have housing policy, but the housing policy from top down may lead up to a certain level, except when we start looking at the poor people themselves and trying to see how to make them visible group in the society and they are active and they are part of the changemaking. So people center and find a way that people become the active actor. People become the focus of whatever assistance and find a way to link them together into a network and from the network you link with the other support organization, the civil society, the institution in the city and also the city government. Building a coalition, a coalition of community support organization and the city government and to make them visible, to make them active, to find a way that community themselves have the information and they are the one who have active action, they have the passion to lead the physical change. If people become active actors and they make the move together at scale, we support the people to make a change from them at the city scale in which we call city wide, city wide upgrading and city wide change. When it is the city wide, which is a scale of the poor, so many community or the poor in the city get together with sitting with the government, sitting with the other, it becomes a system change. It becomes a system change. It's not just a welfare approach, a very sporadic welfare activity, a little bit here, a little bit there, no relationship and then it dies. So it's very important that it continue, it link and people also learn and they make the move with the support of the maybe civil society or the organization. We have the institution here in Thailand called CODI, Community Organization Development Institute, in which we institutionalize the people driven approach. Yeah, start from the people, start the survey, how many of them get them to sit together to understand the situation, their condition, make a plan, start the saving, mapping and start the work and then when they are a little stronger, we start linking with the government, city government and many other and at the end of the day, it become sort of a joint mechanism between the city, between the development institution and the people at the scale of the city to sit together. So once we ever to bridge the people process and the government system to be more collaborative, you have a new kind of politics, you enter in new kind of politics where the people power, the government power, the knowledge power are able to come together and then the realistic problem of the people like bad housing situation, eviction, no money for this and that will be brought into the platform. And little by little, when they talk together, people will develop the knowledge and the negotiation power and the government will also learn because if we start the approach by just asking the government in Asia, in the Mac home region to be more inclusive, which is something that we commonly understood. I think that from all the government I know, the city government I know in Mac home region, they would simply not understanding how to do it, or they are not interested to do it, sorry to say. Vietnam also, Laos also. Sometimes they have good intention but they don't know how to do it and they're a little afraid of the poor community. They don't know what's inside and they're afraid of the demand from the people. So they have to learn that people are the answer, people are the solution. And then the urban poor housing condition could be better, climate resilience could be better, but only we center the people as the answer and bring the people into an active actor of the process. So people are the answer, but we need to know how to work on that. It's not just people, just a few persons who come into the process and participate with the government program. It needs to be organized as a group of community. It needs to have a continued process. It needs to be inclusive, even in any given community that everybody is a part of that. And have confidence, have plan, have information to move forward. So we need professional, we need professional and knowledge how to support this change process. I work with the government, I know the government way of doing, in most of the Macaulay region in Thailand also. We develop the institution that we are top down. We have the culture of rules, regulation and you got to follow rules and regulation. Society have changed. Society have changed. We need a little more understanding how to open up and how to build the possibility and the process in which people become a part of the change mechanism. And in doing so, they are growing, they are stronger. And they are a part of the whatever mechanism the government may develop about. And we develop the citywide where we map all the slum communities and they build a network and they propose which community would go first. And then we support the budget. Support the budget. This is very important. Most of the budget in our society are top down budget. Budget to the government organization is the resource in which the people have to follow the government instruction. We need the kind of budget that would allow more participation, more collaboration so that everybody have a role to be a part of. In the CODI process and the ACHR we pass the budget to community and let them be the owner of the project. We send architects to work with the community to make change with them and with the city as well. And now we have all the city committee where the city authority, community network, civil society, the architect, the professor are all sitting together. I think that is the kind of direction that we should look and we can find several possible answers for housing, for climate change, for environmental development or even quality of life. Great. Thank you, Khun Somsok. I think I have seen for myself the possibilities that is offered by this sort of people driven approach that isn't just top down but is networked as well. And it's about engaging all the relevant stakeholders at city level. So now I will move on to Mr Anuxai. From your experience working in Laos on the new town development, can you explain some of your experiences of successes and challenges in terms of trying to ensure a more inclusive urban governance approach? Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm really great to be here and also to discuss and share what I have done regarding for urban development, particular for the urban town in the small town and poor town like in Laopida. Some of us here might have a chance to visit in Laos. You will see that it's in Laos for the small town. It's very limited. We call it the public space. So even there was no walkway. You will use just only the luxury car to go everywhere and motorbikes. So that is one of things. And the another is also the environmental issue in the urban town. There are so many that just happened. So I was one of the team who support for the urban town. I will give you some example that what we did to provide the better urban environment to the town. So the project that support this, we also include that to improve for the urban infrastructure like roads, increase more space for the park and as the space for the community, for the citizenship in the town. And we also include as much as possible for the space for the park in the urban area. And we also include to solve the issue of the wastewater from the household level. This one that we use the decentralized wastewater treatment system. However, even when we call it decentralized, but actually it's not decentralized because just only the one location that is made for the wastewater treatment for the town. So basically if decentralized should be, it's coming from each of the households. So this one we also try to solve. However, it's not really solved at the root cause of the wastewater but we solved the root cause of the problem before release this wastewater to the make home. And we also to support for the waste management but therefore the sewage waste and including for the flood protection. In previous section also discuss what exactly they try to make fast protection or to avoid or mitigate from the flooding because in this area what we call is like a prolonged flooding. So it's like the seasonal flooding every year is flooding but a person who live in those areas is quite poor because they don't have enough investment to buy land where it's quite high price and also good condition. So this area is liquid first. So that's why project to introduce the concept that to make a watergate and also pumping the water out during the rainy season and also to stock the water from the treatment and for the farmer that they can do agriculture in the right season. And for the waste management we also support and provide the complexity as the landfill construction and also including for the rigid treatment system and also have a compost and recyclable. However all of this as I already mentioned previously we not really solve at the root cost we solve at the end of the problem it's not exactly that we go and to solve where is originates of this issue. And together on this that is quite a challenge that how to engage people who participate in the project and to be to benefit of this. People here who have a chance to visit Sawanaket you may find that Sawanaket is one of the area of the city in Lapida have quite a beautiful embankment park compared to like the other because this design is not originally from just only environmental perspective but it's coming from the consultation with the community in the area they strongly recommend if need to make the park or embankment it must be that is multiple benefits to the community because not only just only this is for protect of the flooding during the extremely event like the water high but it should be more at the function for the community make it more beautiful so you can see the previous photo that is the location where is space for the community for the children that they can play together and we also provide some exercise equipment for the public that they can use they can play and then people can run around there and for one of the key challenge of this that I found that we try to so far is just only so at not exactly like the root cause of the problem as I already mentioned for example like the waste management wastewater waste management but however that what we can do right now just only try to make it the best as possible that's what we can do so far and basically we also integrate the other dimension into this support for example awareness raising to try to integrate more people to understand about the waste and to understand the root cause of this and how to solve it but sometimes it's not an easy to start with it but for the polluted it's happened right now how to stop some certain issue that we have to decide to solve even it's not exactly the right point but we have to do it so for the other challenge for operation and maintenance one thing that is also related to the government who make a decision to operate on infrastructure that project provide that one also still lack of encourage the society how to integrate and cooperate for the operation and maintenance as well so this is also one of the key challenge how to sustain up the urban town and how to ensure that urban town is sustainable and to to facilitate this we also found that right now we also faced some issue for the waste management in La Vida as well so I just stop this point Thank you and thank you for sharing the photos as well and for highlighting that whilst some solutions are being implemented there's still a way to go to really address some of the challenges right at their root cause to help the urban development so another key challenge that we find in urban context is how to get climate finance down to the ground level like Kunsumsuk mentioned as well how can we get local governments and local communities to access the funds when they're a best place to identify and implement necessary interventions Miss Chum could you maybe speak to this yes I don't have slides so again like Miss Chum I'll just share what my observations are so I think the fundamental problem here is I don't know how long this has been going on basically there's a mismatch between what we say it's important to support and how much of the funds and financing actually go to where it matters the most which is to the local level the local authorities, the communities the civil society and at the moment it remains that for all of these important high level talks related to climate non-state actors including the city governments themselves they are not part of the national government so they basically do not have a voice or any official decision making or contribution to all these negotiations as well as in the let's say right now the world is talking about we need to mobilise 10 trillion or billions of funds to the global funds the UN agencies to the multilateral development banks so where are the non-state and the local level actors in all of these funds governing mechanisms does not seem to exist so I guess I'm not sure it seems obvious because in my position I am dealing directly with the city governments as well as the national agencies which they are more open and more receptive to bringing the resources down to the local level in fact they advocate to that however it still remains so if there's anyone in the audience from that level of decision making maybe you can share so why is it that 90% I think some literature suggests that 5% or at least not more than 15% of the total public climate finance development finance in general only 5% to 10% will flow to the local level so there's a lot of complaints actually in the ASEAN community which I work with that there's too much events too much workshops too much on writing reports and research of course these are very important right but they are also we need to balance that we need to balance that part of the work with the actual actions taken in fact we may need to prioritize actions and what we need to achieve now for the transformation and for the challenge that we are going to face we need to have actually many many many many cases of local actions slowly and in the long term developing the capacity and basically just doing what the theories and the reports are telling us to do so this is one thing that I want to share in response to your questions great thank you so much and maybe that now we can move on to thinking about climate resilience specifically so if we're looking at urban climate resilience, how can we try and be more inclusive of low income communities and support them in integrating climate resilience into their housing developments infrastructure developments you already touched a bit on this but maybe very briefly is there anything else you would like to add we're running out of time so we'll be quick on this round I think it's very important to be more earlier based which is definitely right to focus on city based city based, ward based community based, community maybe neighborhood based you know because when we focus on the earlier base we include everything we include every element we include the poor we include the leach we include the business sector we include the environment we include everything yeah so the key point is to be more earlier based and get everybody to be involved and change the manner in which when we in our society we have the system like this government, central government local government private sector and things like that you only have to change it into like this that everybody could sit together and see the reality of things on the ground and chair and then find the answer and let the people let the development sector the private sector whoever to take part and put together the effort of managing everything I mean selecting something easier to achieve and go more and more to more difficult so in this way it's like we try to equip the neighborhood, the community the poor as part of the the city development process when we develop the citywide approach we start by surveying all the community in the city either it's a squatter either it's the rental communities the rental room whatever and then invite them into a process to see how we could plan and link with the city link with the land authority whatever and see how we little by little would find a way to collaborate and to develop the solution in which people have to do a lot of homework you have to do a saving so your finance will start moving you got to have information they need to check what are the other social issues all kinds of work community have to do something the city have to do something the different organization have to do something so it's a challenge work a challenge work and a challenge development process in which if you have some success or a good project happen everybody will be a part of that success it's not scattered as one project there one activity over there and no relationship earlier base will be able to link up things together link up the actor together and try to see how every party could be a part of the possible development process in a more holistic picture I think it sounds so simple but in most of the city it's not this picture so the point is that we link this into a more communal process a more holistic process this is a chair power and I say that chair power because in the existing system of any city any Macaulayian country or whatever it's not the right kind of chair power to make things happen if things going to happen it happens because of some kind of power you either have financial power or you have the authoritative power but the authoritative power is stopped down money power is come from the private sector to invest this and that and make a lot of scatter development so if we link people to be in the same picture and chair and everybody know what going to happen and how to replant, how to rethink how to get everybody involved it's a chair power once a chair power is possible then a chair development will be possible and everybody will be inclusive in different manner thank you yes I think the area based approach is really a great concept for trying to get a really inclusive approach to urban development Miss Chum could we maybe think about this kind of inclusive approach to a transition to low carbon cities do you have any suggestions well yeah so low carbon development and low carbon cities usually they are they are dealt as a different stream from resilient city or adaptation or others so well let's say if low carbon city is realised there are potential for the society, the marginalised group to have better quality of life and wellbeing let's say if we change the infrastructure the buildings, the transport the industrial process to be cleaner and to be based on clean fields then air pollution will reduce there will be also much more greening kinds of projects so that benefits everyone then there's also the lifestyle and value change that is happening in low carbon cities so it means closing the material loops meaning changing the food production system which currently is very very wasteful for example dealing with the waste and then separating it at source turning it into compost as we heard from the session about food security that will generate new jobs and usually these jobs can benefit the lower income groups because usually these jobs are seen as not classy not prestigious so these are some of the examples that it will benefit but then I think there's not enough discussion about the upstream and downstream effects of low carbon cities because if we really have that carbon model implemented it means we will have a lot more demand for metals and resources to have the solar panels wind turbines and the batteries so these actually have terrible effects on wherever the mining is going on so by some estimates by 2050 let's say we electrify the energy systems, the transport I think I've read estimates that we need five times more metals than what is the currently available amount from the current level of mining operations and also we have not talked about the impact of all these disposal of these solar panels and other all these electronic and hazardous waste this is a long-term issue we need to pay attention more thank you and I think often those who are most exposed to the hazardous impacts of waste products are low-income groups who are working in waste sorting jobs speaking of health Mr Anuk Sai could you briefly talk about any work you have done around the health impacts of climate change in cities in Laos thank you, yes basically this health we look in a different way what we are looking because if we look the health as the hospital service so that another dimension that absolutely that is not the health of what the perception I'm looking because the health of the people and society in the context of the climate change you know to make the city become more quick green space and then space must be available inclusive for all everyone that people can do exercise and then when there is a space can generate more about the social space people gathering, people joining exercise together and then mental health also be good and the dimension of the environmental health in the city must be as the priority that to how to solve the water, how to solve the solace and also solve the problem issue that what are the projects that I already introduced for example occur the flooding always this is generate the issue to the health of the community and effective person so if we can do this and improve the urban city more environmentally and more space for the people so the health of the people and communities will be better then just focus on hospital yes I think environmental health is very much linked to the health of urban residents so we have about 6 minutes left so I would like to open it up to the floor if anyone has any points they would like to add or questions for our speakers I know we have some urban climate resilience specialists in the room do you have a microphone? maybe it is a question more to show because you work with ASEAN I know ASEAN has so many city projects or initiatives ASEAN Smart Cities Network ASEAN Sustainable Urban Strategy and you know all these but then in your experience and exposure to them to respond to let's say the needs on the ground after all ASEAN always talks about oh we are covering 650 million people, poor or rich or whatever and urban area is another important area and so forth or maybe any of the other speakers who may wish to chip in thank you Kun Apichai can you clarify a bit more how effective or how beneficial have they been basically ASEAN was created to help develop the whole region the 10 countries and also to address any of the problems including urban problems and now with urban intersecting with climate, intersecting with air pollution or water pollution and they give out awards every year they give out awards and how do they help them or is there some incentives or what in other words I want to know what is the scorecard of ASEAN on this I am not aware of any scorecard but the funds that actually flow to the ASEAN cities I don't have the figures but my observation it's not 50% it's not 40% so very minority of the projects actually provide the grants or project funds to the city level and sometimes these funds also flow to the communities with the city government so I would say yes I cannot say how beneficial but they are beneficial and I think the strategy is like we don't realistically expect regional organisation like ASEAN to be able to help all the cities so we need to strategise, we need to target the top 10 of the frontrunner cities and we need to give the scarce resources that we have already to them so I think more and more we see greater recognition of the need to have projects for the cities but what is still not moving is that the funding sources and the funders they have not yet translated into the supply I'm not sure I think you have a longer perspective than me but ever since I have been involved it has almost been the same 90% of the funding and technical assistance is not in the form of ground projects so if we want to solve this problem we really need to know why this happens and if we accept that this will never change then we need to think about where are the alternative sources of funding it cannot come from public climate finance it must be from private sources philanthropy or crowdfunding so these days what is good is that we have new technologies and we have city governments now they have more experience about international cooperation and they know how to make themselves visible and stand out they can attract other supporters not only from funders alone so in that way I perceive this is a positive trend and I would like to ask everyone in the room if you have a chance to make any decisions regarding funding projects please consider ground projects and also consider inviting representatives who can understand the local level to join the decision making and governance mechanism that's very important thank you so much I hope I answered your question we have one more question hi it's here actually from the backstage from ASEI I would like to know about your experience because you have been working on the cities and many of the cities especially the support from ASEAN that you may experience some of the funding just goes to them I would like to know some of the cities for example that you can let us know that if there is any cities or town that they receive the fund and they become able to make it sustain for their projects and if they're still doing that is there any cities or any town that you have been working with and they're still continue doing these kinds of trends or these kinds of activities to make it sustainable thank you I'm not from this side could answer this question if we provide funds to the cities and they have a project to sustain it by themselves my experience is this is a very broad generalisation we don't expect 100% of the cities to sustain this is not realistic at all maybe I would say 30% success rate is realistic and what I see is the choking point is that now we have many many many pilot projects and they sort of let's say in terms of the coverage if we say we do waste separation at source or public participation kind of things kind of reaches at most 10% maximum of the total city population it cannot scale up beyond the pilot scale this is the challenge we are facing and my suspicion is there must be always if you have 100% in the room there will be 10% who are like extra passionate extra initiative to do so we have already not reached that level 10% how can we go beyond the 10% it's very important question for us to answer at some point working at the regional level international level in different capacity I think that the intervention of the international organisation either Asian, Asian or whatever is so important I mean intervention from the outside of the a certain power bodily is important but we have to do it in such a way that the intervention trigger a bigger change process so the activity is not an activity in itself but it trigger change it's an intervention to spark of a political process for instance if you going to develop we have the money to develop three cities how can we implement the three cities in such a way that there is a national committee setting up the city be select by the others the city by different institutions so the selection is a part of the selection of the country for instance and then what kind of policy we would like to make a change so it becomes more participatory more a trickling process to a bigger change a strategic intervention in a way so in this way it's not an isolated sovereign city in itself but it's sort of linked into a whole of something that they could see each other and the society see it as an opportunity to do a new interesting possibility because the government budget may be too restrictive but the support from outside open up new possibility and new possibility is new possible to make bigger change or linkages to a policy possible form of doing new things into a society I think for international support it's so important for Asia and it's sort of open new possible intervention into the existing source existing policies so what are that strategic process to be designed so the political process be changed by that intervention it could be small budget it could be big budget doesn't matter at all this is one answer the second answer is that there are a lot of good people in any given country good city, good intention people some not so good it's understandable but how to use the possible one to lead the new new possible process to lead the change and to show new example so the not so good or the very slow city can be a part of so make whatever intervention in the spotlight in the visible learning from the others definitely you find some good people on the ground and how we could be a part of their change and they also be a part of a good leading process in their country and in the region I think that is quite exciting and it's possible to do thank you I think we have to wrap up now but I would like to thank our panellists for your interventions and for sharing your cases I would like to give a nice note to end on like even if funding or resources are really limited you can scale up the experience and the lessons learned from implementation by networking with other cities, with other community groups with other local governments and NGOs and so on so that the small resources can have a broader impact on a larger scale to our panellists and let's give them a round of applause