 Okay, hello everyone and a very very warm welcome to today's IID debates where we're going to be looking towards a nature positive economic recovery post COVID-19. We are really delighted to be hosting today's event with the Green Economy Coalition. A huge thanks to all of you, our audience for arriving promptly and being in being part of our virtual space today we've got a really fantastic panel lined up and I'm certainly looking forward to hearing their insights from a new global analysis on integrating nature into COVID-19 recovery plans and budgets. My name is Juliet, I'm the events officer IID and I'll be kind of behind the scenes today, providing some technical support. And with that I am absolutely delighted to hand over to Najma Mohamed, she is the policy director at the Green Economy Coalition and our moderator for today's discussion. Najma, over to you please. Thank you so much Juliet and good day everybody wherever you're joining from and thank you for joining us at this webinar. So today we want to be sharing with you insights emerging from a global analysis on integrating nature into COVID-19 recovery plans and budgets. I lead the policy team at the Green Economy Coalition which is the world's largest movement working towards a just transition to green and fair economies. So 2020 was meant to be a major policy year for nature. Governments were expected to gather in Kunming in China to draft new tenure targets to protect nature. Countries were preparing to ramp up their ambition and to address climate change, including the use of nature based solutions. And we were grappling with the alarm bell from global biodiversity scientists at the start of 2020 that nature was actually declining globally at rates never seen before in human history. But the bigger challenge of the COVID pandemic was awaiting all of us and it was at this moment that the GEC, the Green Economy Coalition through the Economics for Nature project initiated a global policy analysis to look at how nature was being integrated in economic decision making. And for the last two years, as we all know, decision making has been dominated by how countries respond to the pandemic, the pandemic, ensuring the well-being of people and how economic recovery. Thank you, Juliette, if I could have the next slide. So you will see on the next slide that we were a partnership that really supported one another and worked on this program of work over the last year. As you can see today, we are from different parts of the world. The partnership brings together Brazil, France, India and Uganda with the Green Economy Coalition and our partner institution IED based in London. Next slide, please, Juliette. So the team I think were unequivocal in our commitment really to the words of the UN Secretary General that we felt that COVID recovery and our planet's repair must be two sides of the same coin. And even as we continue to move through different phases of the pandemic, we're beginning to realize how integral our economies, our integral relationship and the connection between our economies and societies are. Next slide, please, Juliette. So across the world, there's been a growing consensus on the need to include green spending and measures in how we recover from the pandemic. We're beginning to see that green spending in renewable energy, in better ways of transport, in waste management, in a greener agriculture is beginning to shape some of our COVID-19 stimulus and recovery packages. But for the most part, global analysis shows that most COVID recovery plans still under-invest in nature. And yet nature underpins the economy and our society on multiple levels. We see, you know, more than half of the world's GDP either moderately or very highly dependent on nature. As our colleagues today will tell us from Brazil and from India, Uganda where there's a very high dependence on nature. Yet one-fifth of countries are at a risk of the ecosystems collapsing. And for the more than 1.2 billion workers whose jobs and livelihoods depend on healthy, stable ecosystems on nature, investing in nature seems obvious. But what are our governments doing? Next slide please. So the national partners joining me here today will share with us some of the headline findings on how COVID recovery plans and national budgets are prioritizing or not nature. They've analyzed national spending and identified nature positive and nature negative recovery investments. And they've made recommendations on how the countries can sustain and conserve nature as part of the recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm delighted to be joined with the partners today. Mary Solgoes, Amazon Green Economy Hub, Convina based at the Amazon Sustainable Foundation in Brazil. Christoph Kikami, Research Consultant at Vertigo Lab in France, Shatabdi Data, Manager for Policy and Planning at Development Alternatives in India. And Aaron Werike, a National Planner and Consultant for Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment in Uganda. It's a pleasure to be amongst the colleagues and friends here today and we're looking forward to a really good discussion. Joining me today also is Paul Steele, who was Chief Economist in IED and was partnering with the GEC on this work and Paul is one of the technical leads and advisors on the project. And you will share the synthesis findings. So before we start, let me just remind you if you joined a bit later that the chat function is there for you to introduce yourself, get to know one another, say hello to friends that you might be seeing here. And the Q&A function is particularly for you to pose your questions. So I know, Marisol, we've had this discussion multiple times in the year that we've met, and you've always said that Brazil goes first. So let's not break that tradition today, Marisol, let's hand over to you to kickstart our discussion today. Over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Najma. It's a great honor to be here at this event and launch our case study on green recovery in the Amazon. And as a brief introduction, I'm the Amazon Bioeconomy Hub convener, the Amazon Bioeconomy Hub is an alliance between Foundation for Amazon Sustainability Funds and Green Economy Coalition. We exist to connect, develop and scale up Amazonian bioeconomy solutions at national, regional and global level. For 14 years, FAS, alongside its partners, has been developing solutions with proofs that a green and inclusive economy is possible in the Amazon. And why Amazon Green Recovery matters, Amazon is the largest and most bio-culture diverse ecosystem on Earth, and the figures on this slide demonstrate that. Amazon is very close to reaching a tipping point of no return. And recently the science panel for the Amazon revealed that the situation is very critical with existential implications for Amazon people who are already feeling the impacts of climate change. There are more climate regulation and economic consequences for the planet. So Brazil was hit very hard by the COVID pandemic, but the Amazon area was one of the hardest hitting of the more than 600,000 deaths, almost 12% accurate in the Brazilian Amazon. Thank you, Juliet, next slide. So in Brazil, more than, thank you, Juliet. In Brazil, more than 114 billion in tax and budget execution was expended to combat the effect of the pandemic in 2020, which represents around 7% of national GDP. This resource was allocated to the health sector and to minimize the socioeconomic effect caused by the pandemic. We noticed, and we can report that natural capital was not considered as national informant as a driver of these measures. In fact, there is no clear policy in Brazil, or initially from the federal government to promote a green economy recovery response as a way to mitigate the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic. And out of this resource, an estimated around 10 billion dollars has been applied in the Amazon region, impacting natural capital in some way. So you can see among the negative measures on the left, we can report that agribusiness was considered the priority economic sector. So there are nine infrastructure concessions were foreseen to 2021 and 10 regulatory acts that had weakening the environmental governance in mining, fishing and forestry. On the other hand, we had some positive measures in family farming, low-carbon agriculture, a promotion of bioeconomy programming, connectivity and sanitation improvement projects. Next slide, please, Juliet. Just to finish in this final slide, among the economic stimulus measures analyzed in our study, we can say that 87.2% were expected to negatively impact natural capital in the Amazon, while around 10% would contribute positively. And in 20.9%, there's uncertainty about the impact. So as I demonstrate, there's no green recovery move coming from the federal government in Brazil. However, what we can see is an unprecedented movement happening at the subnational level with local governors converging efforts, converging several public and private sectors into a green recovery in the area. So facing the absence of protagonists coming from the federal government in the promotion of the green recovery, the governors of the state of the legal Amazon, they launched in July of this year, the what we call PRV, the green recovery plan, the Amazon green recovery plan. And with some guidelines and priorities for the region. And FAS is one of the organizations that has been acting in helping implementing and disseminating this plan in the Amazon area. So this study was developed by the Amazon Bioeconomy Hub. And with the support of my colleague, Carlos Igono, is aimed at supporting local governments and in the implementation of this plan, the PRV in the region. So I end this presentation and I thank again GC, IED and Economic for Nature for this opportunity. Thank you all. Thank you so much, Marisol. And you were excellent in keeping time. Luckily for me, it's been months of working together and seeing, you know, the richness in the story that you're telling. I hope we've got lots of time, you know, that we will stay to time in our presentations and we can have lots of, you know, good discussions on the presentation. So just a reminder, if you've got a question for Marisol, please use the Q&A function. You can ask a question directly on the presentation, or perhaps listen to all four or five presentations and formulate your question thereafter. So let me hand over now to France to Christophe. Please go ahead, Christophe. Thank you, Najma. And thank you, Marisol. That's a great presentation. So my name is Christophe Picamille. I work for Vertigo Lab, which is a small French company specialized in socio-economic and environmental evaluation. So concerning the study we have conducted with GEC, so we have evaluated the impacts on biodiversity of the French recovery plan, which was presented in September 2020 with a budget of 100 billion euros. The French recovery plan, which is called Plan Relance, includes 64 measures. We have classified according to their impacts on natural capital. So major measures of this plan include substantial tax reduction for French companies. French companies support employment measures, the car industry, and also public investment in the health sector. Therefore, the study concluded that most of the French recovery plan budgets is very difficult. I mean, its impacts on biodiversity are very ambiguous and difficult to analyze. Almost half of its budget was qualified, either as impossible to assess or as neutral. And only, as you can see, only 1% of its budget is expected to have a strong positive impact on natural capital. So we consider, despite the strong dependence of the French economy on biodiversity, the government has missed the opportunity to invest in nature and to truly integrate natural capital into decision making. Next slide please. Thank you. So our recommendations aimed at reducing the uncertainty concerning its impacts on biodiversity and to integrating natural-based solutions in order to increase human well-being and to bring immediate economic benefits to French society. Our recommendations include adding environmental conditions to industry and companies and companies support measures because they represent an important part of the plan. And the number of uncertainties, sorry, is very important. So in order to protect natural capital, it will be essential for the French government to focus its investments toward the environmentally friendly sectors. Another recommendation will be to monitor the implementation of announced measures because some of its measures support the car and the industry, which are sectors which can be harmful to biodiversity. And the last recommendation we have made was to systematize natural-based solution because they can bring immediate economic stimulus to society. So that's for me. Thank you for your attention. And I hand over to Najma. Thank you. Nancy Christof, thank you so much. I think we're hearing from Marisol and we saw the figures of the percentage going towards agribusiness in the Amazon recovery efforts or the recovery efforts in the region and from Christof we've heard in France the type of industries that are being supported. I think hopefully when we get into the Q&A we'll have an opportunity to share with you the incredible richness of experience and exchange amongst the team and how in very different economies and geographies across the world. We found that we could learn from one another, from one another, but also the strategies as we will hear later of engaging our governments. So let me hand over to Shatabdi from India to share their story and it was very interesting to see the interesting exchange between France and India in the area of agriculture and both countries wanting to commit to an ecological transition and having ambitions in that direction. So over to you Shatabdi. You're on mute. Thanks Najma. So this is Shatabdi from Development Alternative. So we are our civil society organization in India. So as a part of this study we also did analysis of the COVID recovery package of the government. So to understand how natural capital is represented in the governmental budget. So it is quite evident that India has also widespread impacts of the pandemic on life, livelihood and the economy. So to come out of this pandemic of the economic impacts of the pandemic green economic recovery is fundamental to cope with external shocks and to meet developmental goals. So as like Najma has already emphasized before that like India is heavily dependent like natural capital and biodiversity rich country and it majorly contributes to the various sectors like agriculture, forestry, tourism and also contribute to a generation of livelihoods. Judith next slide please. Thanks. So in the COVID recovery budget so the government announced a COVID recovery package in 2021, 2020 and 2021 financial year. So it amounted to 260 billion USD. So in this budget we some of the priority sectors that were there where agriculture and the life sector, micro, small and medium enterprise sector, rural development, mining and forest sector. So we found that almost 18% of the total allocations in these five sectors had positive natural capital impact. But it was quite surprising that a major chunk of the allocations were ambiguous like we couldn't identify the direction of natural capital impact of those interventions whether those have positive or negative influence on natural capital. But there also existed a few good policies which were relevant for green recovery, but they are also had some gaps, certain gaps which are coming later. And also we looked at the annual budget of the current financial year for the same five sectors. So here we found that it had quite a lot of positive natural capital allocations like almost 50% of the annual budget had positive allocations. Next slide please. So on the left, we have identified a few gaps in these policies in these two budgets. So we found that they are in the COVID recovery package, it mostly focused on monetary policy rather than fiscal policies and also there are certain schemes where and we go in terms of outcomes. That could impact natural capital. And in spite of having certain good policies, there existed gaps in implementation and last mile connectivity there were inequality in access to the benefits of those policies, and also certain policies didn't have consistent allocations in the budget. So from this, we came up with certain recommendations for the government. For example, it is very important to strengthen the natural capital positive scheme and emphasis on the equitable implementation at national and sub national level. And while designing the policies, we need to focus on both short term and long term strategies. We need to strengthen the environmental regulations. There has to be a balance between fiscal and monetary policy interventions. And also while designing the policies when the policy makers are defining the outcome targets, natural capital components needs to be considered so that it has defined outcome targets towards creating positive impact on natural capital. And sufficient scheme level information are needed on public forums to conduct more these kind of studies and analysis. And also we need to engage more with policy makers and different relevant stakeholders to further drive green and inclusive economic recovery. So that's all from my side. Thank you. Over to Najma. Thank you so much. And let me hand over now to our last national partner from Uganda, Aaron. And I remember Aaron shared something on one of our team meetings that really struck me because Uganda is a country that's been engaging with natural capital mainstreaming for a while. You know, they are national accounts in place for natural capital counting. And I remember, you know, Aaron said something very significant is that you can have all the laws and the institutions in place within, you know, the money has got to flow, you know, in that direction. So, so Aaron, let me not take any more of your time over to you. Thank you, Najma. Thank you, Juliette, for the slides. Well, to continue from where you've stopped Najma, Uganda is largely a natural capital reliant country with agriculture counting for about a quarter of the GDP and employing over 70% of the population. When you look at our GDP composition, tourism is a very key player and poorest free and yet tourism is largely motivated by nature. It is natural based tourism. So nature plays really a key role and significant role in our economic development with COVID-19. We had to have a number of interventions, but unlike the previous three countries, we didn't have a standalone COVID-19 recovery package. It was rather integrated in the conventional annual budgeting system. So our COVID-19 recovery packages were in the form of the national budgets for the last two financial years and some additional interventions for selected institutions to resuscitate the businesses. So to start with our first economic recovery package of which is the budget for the financial 2020, 2021, which ended in July, in June this year. The budget was themed on stimulating the economy to safeguard livelihoods, jobs, businesses and industrial recovery. And our analysis in partnership with Jake and IED revealed that 40% of this budget for this recovery package was responsive to natural capital. That means either positively or negatively, although only 3.7% was allocated to water and environment, but there were other interventions on natural capital which were found in other programs on agriculture, manufacturing, tourism, among others. So 40% being compliant means that 60% of the reminder of the budget was neutral, ambiguous, like my friends have informed on governance and other issues which are not very related to natural capital. Now of the 40% which was compliant to natural capital which was impacting natural capital, 70% of that was strong positive, 15% weak positive and 15% strong negative. The 7% being strong positive implies that these were interventions which were tailored to activities that work for natural capital such as restoration of forests, demarcating forest boundaries, enhancing compliance, enforcement to environmental pollution, among others, but also like I've been informed, our economy revolves around natural capital. So the percentages are kind of obvious and given because we are not a very highly industrialized country, it is mainly primary agriculture production and other interventions which are reliant on nature without really producing the environment. However, there were also strong interventions, strong negative interventions such as clearance or bush for agriculture, clearing virgin areas for agriculture and prioritization of a number of crops such as sugar canes, which are in fragile ecosystems like forest reserves and have over the years been key drivers of natural capital depletion. And for the second recovery package which is the budget for the 2020 2021 the current financier. This was also themed on speeding up economic recovery and driving inclusive, driving inclusive growth. But this was much less impact for natural capital with only 28% of it found to be responsive to natural capital management, with even a further decline in what was earmarked for the water and environment interventions, those which follow under the mandated institutions charged with conserving natural capital. Of the 28% interventions which we found to be responsive to natural capital, 60% were strong positive, 26% were weak positive and 13% were strong negative. And just to highlight on the strong negative interventions we had issues such as purchase of land for palm oil production in one of the islands in Lake Victoria. And palm oil has been a key drive of deforestation on one on one other island where forests were cleared to really pave way for commercial palm oil plantations. And yet it had no clear by diverse offsets plans. And then the budget was also inclined to stimulating and kickstarting our industrialization agenda and petroleum development. Although no resources were earmarked to ensure that these are happening in compliance with the environment and natural resource management issues such as enforcement or compliance to to the permits or water resources management were really not highlighted and they were quite silent in the recovery package. And also there were no interventions on how to manage the COVID-19 waste stream. So those were some of the negative interventions equally important. There was nothing on electronic waste which is quite increasing. So the budget was only 28% responsive to natural capital with some positive strong positive interventions and other weak positive interventions. Can we continue Juliet? Yeah. Now, besides the bigger recovery packages, which are the two budgets for the previous two financiers, as I informed there were some direct interventions or money which was advanced to a number of institutions like the Ugandan Women Bank. This one lends out to businesses. Now, the allocations of what was allocated to natural capital was assessed and noted that the bank has the environment as maybe as one of its principles and the disbursement of this money, 30% of it went to agriculture, 30% to agro industries which are engaged in agricultural production and productivity, then 23% went to manufacturing. However, there was no clarity of information on what actual interventions were implemented because of the confidential nature of lending whereby the banks may not want to disclose exactly what their clients are using the money for having signed disclosure agreements with them. So this was not very assessed deeply because of the scarcity and discount information available. Then lastly, in terms of monetary policy, the COVID-19 response was largely inclined to the fiscal policies as showed by the budgets and the government expenditure through Ugandan Women Bank. But there are also other specific fiscal policy interventions which are really work for nature or against it. We have the deficit financing which engaged borrowing, of course, to address some of the interventions of natural capital which have been addressed in the previous two recovery packages, but also there are some shortfalls in office corporates whereby the money collected from environmental levies, environmental taxes is not is plowed back to the, is putting the consolidated fund, it's not really, there is no clarity on whether this money is used to address environmental issues. So there is a likelihood that money which is gotten from environmental fines, environmental taxes and penalties is used to degrade the environment in one way or another because there is no disclosure of information on the flow and expenditure of the revenue collected from environmental taxes. So that is a gap in the fiscal policy which we think as we recover needs to be addressed. And then lastly, the monetary policy goal is to maintain the inflation rate at 5% and natural capital has a key role to play here because our inflation rate is largely driven by food prices. Whenever we have food scarcity, we have inflation rising high because food prices are a key determinant of inflation. Can we move to the recommendations? Aaron, can I ask you to use one minute to wrap up and also I see in the chat that Juliet has posted the Uganda studies so that's also available for participants to look at. So one minute for you recommendations. Yeah, thank you for the recommendations. We are looking at two things largely ensuring that the budget before the budget is passed in parliament is scrutinized through natural capital gains and we are working with the advocate's position for the government and the environment which is important to ensure that this comes to fruition and also coming up with physical environmental reforms because currently natural capital is underpriced. The externalities from the government are not captured in the in the prices of goods and services so natural capital is treated as a pretty good which fuels its degradation. So we are calling for fiscal environmental reforms which really integrate natural capital also in the pricing and in the taxes imposed on a number of producers and factories and lastly we needed an engagement strategy with policymakers who are in parliament in the midst of finance to ensure that the budgets and the plannings are highly informed and reliant on natural capital accounting which was generally for the common stone. And I think with these recommendations were implemented we shall be able to get to that. Thank you Najma and thank you for your attention. Thank you so much, Aaron. I don't think that the five minutes we've allocated to each of the national partners to justice right Paul to the incredible discussions that we've had as a team over the last few months of learning that that's happened you know between partners. Paul would you take us in the last few minutes before we open up the Q&A and just a reminder if you haven't yet please post your questions in the Q&A and then we can have a look at them and vote for the ones that you want us to prioritize. Paul maybe some from your side to share you know on some of the country learnings that have emerged. Great thanks Najma and other colleagues who presented it's been a real privilege to work with such an engaged and active team representing analysts actually in their own countries who could get the data and discuss it with policymakers and follow up and disseminate findings. So I'm just going to present two quick slides before we open up for discussion and should have about 20 minutes there. But the first slide as you see takes all the different bits of data that has been presented from the rich national studies and tries to summarize it on one graph. And you see at the bottom there, strong positive impact, low positive impact, low negative impact, strong negative impact, neutral and then unable to assess. And this kind of methodology we developed as a group and refined and then discussed several times. So this is very much a group set of findings I'm presenting. So you see strong positive impact represented by the particularly by the blue column is Uganda. So as Aaron presented, despite some hiccups by and large the covert recovery package and the budget was strongly positive impact on natural capital. So that shows that Uganda if you like, has a lot of positive lessons to share other countries. Second, moving to the second set of columns, no positive impact, and and then, and then was particularly the case of France, where you see that there were some positive impacts particularly around some of the areas that Christoph presented, like organic agriculture and so on I think it was then moving to low negative impact. There you see Brazil coming out almost 90%. So by and large the focus in Brazil as we've heard from Marisol was on the agribusiness and that had generally no negative impacts on natural capital, not surprisingly, many of the agribusinesses are likely to impact cut down pre existing forest lands. Then moving to strong negative impact, a combination of Uganda and India. So we, we heard from India that there was some negative impacts, particularly around mining. As Shatabdi presented and as you can see from their country report in terms of neutral, there was some, some issues, and then particularly in India around a bit in France, some areas unable to assess in that it's going to depend on how the, how the funding plays out and I'll come back to that in my final slide. Please. So these are six recommendations, again based on the four country studies and this was discussed, I think twice by the team in our monthly or six weekly a team calls. So again, it's very much a team effort. So it's recommendations for the COVID recovery which will be presented along with the summaries of the synthesis of the country studies in what we're calling a synthesis report, which will all be collectively co-authoring and will hopefully come out in the next couple of months or so. So the first one point that all of us have been making is governments should invest in natural capital to bring out to bring economic benefits, growth opportunities. I mean, it's an obvious point for the audience here but we still need to make the point clearly to governments and to other other and to parliamentarians and so on who control the budget. Secondly, and perhaps this is a more novel point but did emerge from the findings, governments need to recognize that natural capital investments drive social inclusion. So they're not just good for nature but they're also good for people particularly poor women and men who are at the frontline of suffering the impacts of natural capital degradation. And just to give some examples, we've heard particularly from India and so on about a small and medium scale enterprises and how these are important to receive natural COVID recovery funds and many of these SMEs are dependent on nature, such as small and medium scale enterprises in the agri-food processing business or some indigenous rights, particularly the case of from Amazon but also some other countries. I'm sure you can think of your own country if you're participating where indigenous rights are hugely linked to nature. And then social protection, again to take the example of India, one of the things that happened is that India has this enormous, I think it's probably the world's biggest social protection scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, which depends on investing in watersheds and that received some additional COVID recovery funds. Third recommendation is that governments link credit facilities to environmental conditionality. We heard a bit about this from Aaron in Uganda, but it applies pretty much to all the countries and actually this is one of the issues why in some countries it was challenging to assess the impacts of the recovery funds on natural capital because depending on the extent to which credit facilities such as banking loans and loans to the development banks were linked to environmental conditionality. It wasn't clear to what extent these would be good or bad for the environment and we heard about that from I think Uganda and also from France. Then I've already mentioned this government should support environmentally friendly small and medium scale enterprises. Fifthly, particularly the case of Brazil but also other countries, government should support small scale agriculture and not support environmentally damaging agribusiness and then finally, particularly from India, government should not support environmentally damaging mining. I'll stop there and hand over to Najma and look forward to the discussions. Thank you. Thank you Paul. I mean the questions are really great. We've got about 15 minutes in our time to get to the questions and I think let's kickstart off. So Anna's question got the most votes. So Anna's asking the question, how important do you see public private finance schemes being to raise finance fund nature positive solutions? How do you see the future of public private intersection evolving? That's the one question so I'll just mention the three questions and I'll give the panelists a time to think about it. The second question, which I think Marisol, you might have addressed in the chat but I'm happy if you if you want to just share it again, is one from Steve Bass, who asks about, you know, the mentions of the state governance and then you Amazon recovery, recovery plan. And what would you advise governments to do that would make the biggest difference in shifting from deforestation to a conservation based economy. And the third question that I'd like to take is Lee, I think from one from Chris, because I think this brings a sort of cross country question. Were there any examples of nature positive COVID recovery policy in change that were common across the countries and any negative policies that the country shared. So, looking to the panel would like to take Anna's question. We don't have time now also ask candidates, perhaps also see if we can answer some of the questions we won't get to while, while they, while they respond to the ones we're going to take on the webinar. So anyone up for the first question, the public private financing schemes and how they can be used to raise finance. Marisol I see that on but I'll give you the first go go ahead. Yes, in our case in Amazon. First of all, I thank you Anna for the question in in Amazon. We, we've seen this, especially if hybrid and financial mechanisms that has been arising in the past three years. They, they prove being very important because they tend to be more patient capital, especially for, for example, businesses at early stage, which requires a more patient investment and and private and public. And they tend to make this, and this philanthropy, a strategic philanthropy mechanisms, which are more other end to the reality of the businesses in the forest based enterprises in the Amazon so I do believe that this is already a reality in in the area, and it has provoked. It has emerged. It has helped it to to boost an innovative ecosystem in the Amazon so so I do believe that this, this is, this is a reality already it's not just a future but it's already a reality, at least in the Amazon. Thank you. Thank you, Marisol. Aaron, do you want to come back. We want to come on that question before we move to the other questions the sort of models and opportunities for public and private finance to come together for nature. Go ahead, Aaron. Thank you, Najma. Yeah, I think the outlook for public-private partnerships and investment for nature is bright because it is increasingly becoming clear that the private sector has to really integrate natural capital in its operations and going beyond just having a relationship or corporate social responsibility to actual investment. So we've seen a number of local green enterprises coming up and also a number of investors, and even some banks coming up with financial products in form of equity to finance innovative natural capital responsive interventions. So I think the future is, is, is, is bright, but also to nature it more the public sector or the development government on development financing institutions need to derisk the investments in natural capital enterprises to be able to address those impending factors which are being invested by putting in place relevant infrastructure or coming up with a low-cost credit to attract more investors in natural capital because it is a new market and the returns are not yet clear, but the future is bright. Thank you. Absolutely. Aaron, thank you. And thank you, Aaron and Marisol, for your responses. So Marisol, the next question is for you. So why do you think about that? I could just give Christopher and Shatabdi maybe a heads up to start thinking about the question, you know, what was common amongst the countries. But maybe let me just add on the sort of public private sector question beforehand back to you, Marisol, is that I think what really struck me from across the countries is that there was a lot of investment going towards infrastructure in, you know, across the countries. And I do think when I was struck, Marisol, when Carlos from your team was speaking about, you know, the positive impact on sanitation infrastructure on the natural capital in the Amazon, because they would, you know, infrastructure, sanitation systems would be formalized, river health would be improved. So I do think you've got to start thinking about investment in nature, not only as, you know, direct investment into, you know, the strong, I guess, strong capital investments into biodiversity and nature, but also think about how are we investing in infrastructure that we need, you know, how will we build the roads that we need, you know, how will we invest in the sanitation systems or the housing infrastructure that we need. Marisol, do you want to take Steve's question on the green recovery plan before I hand to Christopher and Shatabdi on the third question. Yeah, thank you, Najma. Thank you, Steve. And so based on our study, the most important recommendation, let's say, we believe that bioeconomy must occupy a strategic position as an intersectional public policy is still in Brazil. We still have a very diffuse governance when it comes to bioeconomy, and we do not have any national plan for bioeconomy, and this impact the incentive in the Amazon area. So that's why we do believe that public spending, having our national plan for bioeconomy and we have a movement arising coming from consultation for Amazon, Brazilian coalition, different forums, national forums that are speaking and that are recommending and working and making pressure to have a national bioeconomy plan, because nowadays still the spending are concentrated into MAPA, which is the Ministry of Agriculture, and we do believe that having a national plan would be more transversal and as it needs, as bioeconomy needs to really be a very structural element in the area. Thank you so much, Marisol. And might I just encourage all of you to have a look at the FAAS website to understand what Marisol means, which is about an Amazon bioeconomy, because it might not be what you have in your mind, in economy with this, you know, led by big businesses very much in a people-led sort of strategy for an economy that preserves and conserves the forest but also enables local communities to make a living and to get their livelihood from the forest. Shatabdi Christof, the big question, but Paul, please come in here because I know that you're working with all of us on getting the synthesis findings out of the work. Shatabdi, what would you think from, I mean it's been months we've been spoken to one another, both one another, I think through this moment of the pandemic, what would struck you with, you know, some of the common findings across the countries in our experiences with natural capital and natural communities? Yeah, so one could be regarding the agricultural and the life sector. So I think across all the countries, there has been certain interventions, which have very strong natural capital, for example, promotion of organic farming or micro irrigation projects and all, and also certain intervention in this sector also has strong negative influence on natural capital. Thanks, Shatabdi. I think the first time when India shared with us the example of investment in agriculture being natural capital positive, we were comparing that with the investment in Brazil, you know, in the agriculture business, but I think the important and the richness of the work and I encourage you all to look at the studies is that in India, Shatabdi correct me, there's a big move, as you said, you know, to invest in organic agriculture for states who wants to go entirely, you know, organic and it's something that those of us on the outside were not aware of initially thinking that investment in agriculture, you know, would be, you know, negative, but then, you know, so much of the context, the policy context, you know, matters. Christophie, say anything you want to add, before I see if Paul wants to bring anything perhaps on the national capital negative or Yeah, I mean, I agree with Shatabdi because in France, too, we have seen some improvements toward the agricultural transition so yeah, most of good positive impact measures in France were agricultural measures, so that's a good thing. And but concerning negative measures, it's hard to say because mining sectors, I mean, sectors such as mining sectors in France, we don't have this kind of sector in, I mean, in our country, in our country. So it's very hard to comment. We don't have any strong negative measures in France, but it's mostly because right now we import a lot of natural resources from countries in Africa, in Asia, so it's an over debate, actually. It is indeed another debate, Christophie. Thanks for that reflection. Paul, before I just, you know, put one question and I'm afraid we've run out of time, the questions are excellent, please panellists, if you have the time, respond to them directly in the Q&A. Paul, any reflections from your side? I know you're pulling everything together. I know you mentioned that one of the surprising findings was that investing in natural capital is also good for people because of the amount of livelihoods and jobs and industries that actually depend on healthy stable ecosystems. Yeah, thanks, Najma. I mean, maybe with my last minute or two, what I'd like to do is just maybe encourage others on this call to delve into the analysis, as you've said, Najma, but also to and see if they're in, in France, India, Brazil or Uganda, whether it chimes with their own findings. There was a question about the role of civil society in the chat, which I thought was particularly relevant. Civil society has a role, encouraging this debate and getting these kind of issues to decision makers, whether they're in the public or the private sector. But I think it would be great for those of you whose country isn't covered to do a similar kind of analysis or encourage a similar kind of analysis or even reach out to us to work with you to do a similar kind of analysis. It's frankly not rocket science. It's very straightforward. You look at how much governments are spending the budget as an economist, and I'm sure I'm a bit biased, but I think it's true is the key decision making mechanism of a government and of society as a whole, if you spend a lot on tearing down your forests, it's going to be bad if you spend a lot of money on organic agriculture, it's obviously going to be good for natural capital. So basically just look at the numbers, how much is being spent by your government on different aspects of natural capital and to what extent they're positive and negative. And that kind of analysis, while it's very relatively straightforward, it's amazing how little work has been done on this. This is really the first ever national studies that have been done and it would be great to get more of them going. Thank you. Thank you so much, Paul. And I know there are many questions in the chat that we didn't get to. But we know that 2020 wasn't the year when we could come together to draft a new plan, new goals for nature and how we move towards a nature positive economy by 2030. Can I ask Marisol Shatabdi Christophe Aaron, 30 seconds, your one last message for your country to take the findings and recommendations seriously to consider them as they try to rebuild the economy, stimulate livelihoods, but also protect the planet on which we all depend. Marisol, we have to start with Priscil. You're 30 seconds. Yes, so first, first again, Najma, we, we must be part of the solution. We have no more time. Amazon is, is reaching a tipping point. This would lead us a complete collapse. So we must, we must act as individuals as decision makers and we must. We must be part of the solution, not just the problem. So thank you. Thank you, Najma. Thank you, Marisol. Christophe, your final words to the French government. Very, very hard question. Yeah, I feel right now we are using too much on carbon and green, green, greenhouse gas emissions. And we need to focus more on biodiversity, natural capital. We have to broaden our scope because it's very important and yet the situation is very, very critical. Thank you so much, Christophe. Shut up team. Yeah, so I think for the government it is very important to identify the strength and the weaknesses so we can build on the strength to identify the intended policies that have positive influence on natural capital and also to understand the unintended impacts to minimize the negativities to that deplete natural capital. So that should be the prime focus of the government. Thank you. Thank you, Najma. I think it's very important to implement it has been planned and for Uganda already have a setting point of having some natural capital accounts developed. So these are really in the plan if you can implement that then we shall go along in conserving natural capital because we have an ambitious industrialization agenda and it's very easy to pursue this industry and the industrialization at the expense of the environment so we need to enforce the implementation and see what side has a key role to play here to hold government accountable and foster such conversations. Thank you. Thank you so much, Aaron. That would be exactly my sentiments. We often think about nature as existing in the national parks, but nature is in the way that we live, the way we consume, the way we industrialize, the way we build our economies. And so I think first the recognition of that dependence has to be done for us to begin to identify and understand how we can plan, how we can recover and design the measures that protect, conserve and maintain nature. Thank you for the great discussion. This work is ongoing as you can hear all of the partners. I think the hardest part comes now having governments engage and incorporate the recommendations in how we recover from the pandemic even as we go through, continue to grow through the phases of the pandemic in India. Development alternatives have engaged with the government. In Brazil, our partners are actively involved in the Amazon Green Recovery Plan and tomorrow morning, Uganda will host a breakfast dialogue where they'll have the Ministry of Finance Planning and Economic Development. So hopefully, Aaron, we get to speak to the people that pull the first strings and get this message. And I think this team has been incredible, as Paul has said, working at country level to engage the key processes and institutions. And I think as just to reiterate our biggest hope is that we firstly recognize the dependence of our economies and societies on nature and second, that we plan and invest and design recovery measures that protect this essential part of life. So a big thank you to all the presenters and before we wrap up, I think Juliette, a final message from IED and GPC. We have two big moments coming up that we'd love to share with you. I think Juliette will post details in the chat. But IED will host the Barber Award lecture on coming up in early December, the 6th December that will focus on the role of women in development. It's either online or in-person if you happen to be based in the UK. And next week, the GEC is hosting our 2021 Global Meeting online under the theme Code Ried for Nature and People, finding the best solutions for scaling a COVID-19 recovery. And we encourage you to join. We'll be taking this discussion on a nature positive economy and recovery much further. And look forward to seeing those of you who can join us there next week. So thank you so much for joining us on the webinar and hope you all have a great day further. It was wonderful to bring the energy and the enthusiasm of this team to a bigger community. Thanks, everybody. Take care.