 Um, so I think that we'll make a start here. Um, I just want to start by saying thank you all very much for joining us for what we hope is going to be a very interesting discussion on the relationship between biodiversity and nature and migration. Um, we've got a really excellent panel and excellent moderator here. So, um, you know, thanks again for joining. Um. I'm going to make a quick start with some technical issues before I hand over to Celine for moderation. Um, the 1st thing is just to let everyone know that we are recording this event. Um, so please be aware of that and that will be shared after the event and it will be distributed. Um, the 2nd is that we'll be doing live tweeting during the event. So please feel free to join the conversation on Twitter. We're using the hashtag. Uh, EU Green week 2020 and we're tagging I am at EU for this event. Um, also towards the end of the event will be doing a Q and a segment. So at that stage, you can put questions to the panelists and moderator in the chat function. Please, when you do that, we would really appreciate it. If you could have your name, your full name and your institutional affiliation there or your role. Um, so everyone knows what that what that direction is. Um, and that's it on the technical side. So now I'm just going to hand over to some professor. Um, we're very, uh, very honored to have professor of moderating this session and professor hook is the director of the international sense of the climate change and development in the independent University of Bangladesh and has been since 2009. Um, he's the senior fellow in the Institute, International Institute for environment and development in London. And of course, he's worked extensively in issues to do with climate change and development in general. So, thank you for leaving and over to you. Thank you very much Katie and good afternoon and good morning to everybody to this. Uh, I hope will be a very interesting discussion on the search for greener pastures exploring the relationship between nature, biodiversity and migration. My name is Salim. You heard, please call me Salim. Uh, it's my pleasure to be the moderator for this, uh, the next hour in a bit that we are going to be together. I'm going to start by just laying out the 3 major objectives of this exercise or this webinar or meeting and then I will briefly introduce the 5 discussions that we have. And then I'll ask each of them in turn to give a little bit of a longer background briefing of themselves. And then we'll go into the conversation and the questions. So, the 3 major objectives that we have for this session is firstly to raise awareness of the relationship between nature, biodiversity and migration. Drawing on practical examples from different bio geographical regions, both in Europe and outside Europe. We have Northern Norway and Senegal represented here for that. The 2nd is to highlight the importance of policy coherence to address these issues, which often are siloed in different places and are not linked together. And to discuss how these could be reflected in the European Union green policy in the European Union financing and including in the European Union's biodiversity strategy for 2030 going forward. And obviously also in the forthcoming climate negotiations that will take place later next year. And thirdly, and finally, we want to unpack the roles and responsibilities of different actors, including the European Union governments, the private sector regional bodies to ensure that migration is considered in the roll out of the European Green Deal. Very often it is left out and mistaken as a problem that occurs after the event because it hasn't been taken into account in the earlier stages of planning of the event. So, these are the overall 3 areas that we want to touch on. I will now very briefly introduce the 5 speakers that we have in the order in which I will ask them the questions and then I'll invite them to introduce themselves as well. So, the first speaker we will hear from is the Honorable Mayor Mamadou Lamintiam, who is the Mayor of KBMR Senegal. And then we will hear from Mr. Runaar Mears-Balto, who is a member of the Sami Parliament of Norway in Northern Norway. And then we will hear from Mr. Ola Henriksen, who is the Regional Director of the International Organization of Migration Regional Office for European Economic Area, the European Union, and NATO. And then we will hear from Ms. Tosca Barucco, who is the Special Envoy for COP26 at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. And then finally we will hear from Mr. Heliodoro Temprano Arroyo, who is the Advisor on International Economic Relations and Global Governance at DG-ECFIN in the European Commission or associated with the European Commission. So, I will now invite each of these panelists to give a little bit more of a description of what your own interests are and the work that you do. I've given your affiliation, so a little bit maybe a minute or two on your own work and your interests. Let me start with Mamadou. Mamadou, please, you have the floor. You have to unmute me. I'm very happy. Go ahead. Yes, go ahead. I'm very happy today to join this panel because it is so important for us. Mamadou, I was a young parliamentarian since 1998. I'm parliamentarian in Senegal. I stopped being parliamentarian in 2016. Then I have 19 here parliamentarians, and I went to be an eco-assist parliamentarian. Then I have to work all of during all my time in the parliament on the topic of environmental. Because I have, in my studies, I am a biological professor. I have my studies in biological and environmental environmental, and it is why it is a topic for me. Then during all the time I was in the parliament, I worked on the network of parliamentarian network of environmental. I had to do it in the parliament during 10 years. I make a lot of network around Africa, around Africa, in which I was working only on this topic of environmental. Now in my country, in my province, in my municipality, where I am now, it is a city in the middle of Senegal, in the north, near the sea. And because of climate change, we have a lot of problems of migration. A lot of our citizens are now going around the sea, around the desert, to join Europe, to join South America, to join North America for immigration. Because of the loss of biodiversity, the changing climate is impacting the way of life of our population. And I am looking for, okay, it is why here this topic is very important for me and I think for joining all together and speak. Thank you very much. You are doing very well. Thank you very much. We will come back to you and hear more about your experience a little later. Let us do the rounds of self-introductions first. So I will now invite Mr. Runaar Mejbalta, who is the member of parliament, the Sami parliament in Norway. We go from Africa to the north of Europe. Runaar, please go ahead. Thank you, Salim. First I'd like to thank you very much for the opportunity to represent the indigenous Sami people in this talk. We are mainland Europe's one indigenous people and our homeland is scattered into four countries, Russia, Finland, Sweden and Norway. So our situation is that we are scattered both inside and outside of the European Union. My name is Runaar Mejbalta and I am the representative of the Sami people residing on the Norwegian side of the border. I am representative of the Sami parliament in Norway, which is the representative organ for the people. And I am also the leader of the Norwegian Sami Association, which is the biggest Sami organization on the Norwegian side. They are working on political and cultural issues. I am really happy to be here and I hope to share the like and how climate change, migration and the loss of biodiversity, but also climate solutions all pose a serious threat to our indigenous livelihoods and culture. Thank you. Excellent. Thank you very much, Runaar and welcome again. So let me now invite our third speaker to give a little bit more of an introduction on his own work. Mr. Ola Henriksen, the regional director of Iowa. Ola, you have the floor. Thank you very much Salim and good afternoon everybody. It's a pleasure being on this panel. And thank you all for participating. Yes, my name is Ola Henriksen. I'm since the beginning of last year the regional director for IOM in Brussels. And before that I worked for almost three decades for the Swedish government in the area of migration. So we've covered quite a large part of it. And our particular interest today is of course how biodiversity has migration. It's a constant interest of IOM as a global organization, but also in the region. I'm looking forward to the discussions today. Thank you. Thank you very much Ola and welcome again. So let me now invite our fourth panelist speaker to introduce herself. Ms. Tosca Baruka from Italy. Tosca, you have the floor. Thank you Salim and thanks to the speaker. I am the Italian MFA Special Envoy for COP26 to ensure that the protection of biodiversity, which is one of the five priority of COP26 is high on our agenda. Our prime minister participated to the COP26 summit at the UN and rest assured that the topics that we are discussing are very high also in the Italian cooperation sector. Thank you so much. Thank you very much Tosca and we look forward to hearing a bit more about that later later. And then the last introduction will be from Heliodoro Tamprano Arroyo from ECFIN, DG ECFIN. Heliodoro, you have the floor. Unmute, you need to unmute. Yes, thank you Salim. As you say, I am an advisor of the International Director General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission. I am actually an international macroeconomist, but I have increasingly moved into development and migration issues. I headed for a while the Globalization and Development Policy Unit of DG ECFIN as well as the Neighborhood and Micro Financial Assistance Unit in ECFIN. I have also spent some time at the International Monetary Fund and more recently I devoted some time at the European University Institute to work on the potential use of EU aid instruments and trade policy to support our external migration and refugee policy. And in that context I did some work in particular on the use of, on the relevance of our climate finance to developing countries for displacement and for displacement and migration. And it's a pleasure for me to be here with all of you here. Thank you very much Heliodoro. We hope to hear a bit more how we might take this issue forward in future in terms of preventing displacement by looking after the environment and biodiversity and issue that we probably don't do enough about or don't know enough about. So I will now start the questions for our speakers and ask them to give us some, share some thoughts and views from their own experiences. I would request that you don't give very long presentations so that we have time to have a back and forth Q&A answer and discussion rather than long presentations but feel free to make sure that you are able to say what you want to say. So the first question is for our Honorable Mayor Mamadou from Senegal and you already alluded to this. What I would like you to do is to share your experience from your region of Senegal or the country of Senegal where you see you already talked about displacement and mobility and people leaving. What is the relationship with environmental degradation and particularly more importantly with the biodiversity loss in your country and in your particular region in your municipality and around your municipality. Mamadou, please share some of your experiences. You have to unmute, you're muted. Mamadou, you have to unmute, you're muted. Yeah, okay, okay. This is okay. Okay, I say that. Okay, go ahead. Okay, in my municipality the loss of biodiversity is characterized in decrease of certain plants and animal species. And here you see the old days we used to see a lot of animals here plants that being impossible to see today. And then it has similarly affected the proper functioning of our ecosystem by making it more vulnerable. And then we have now a long dry season. And older we had a rainy season, we had 9 months or 10 months. Now we have a long dry season and the agriculture is not good. People have not good season for having what to eat. It is why a lot of people are now moving. They go in the capital or they leave the country. Now it is a, you can't see a lot of vegetation here. And it is a fact for livelihooding. And many poultry farmers lose their birds to eat in addition. Some forest plants that tended to grow in rents. There is also the desperation of featuring resource and sowing so off a lot of the cities. Here we use to go to the sea and now it is a problem. Everywhere people use to see to find food in the nature is now impossible. And because of degradation of the nature because of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. And there is a moving of closer. They can't stay in here. It is why the municipality have a topic to do how to retain proper here. We have a lot of people now who are in Europe, who are everywhere in the world in immigration. And then we have making a lot of policy how to retain them here. Or how to make those work now in Europe to come back. With their European experience to make a project here for developing agriculture or other things. It is our first problem. We are making a presentation of trees to modify our environmental. And it is a big project around our city. Around our city we are making a lot of presentation for the removal of the nature. And it is very difficult because if you have new plantation there is no rain. Or you can't have water to make it growing. It is a problem. So we have now to think about some factories. We are making a new factory here. Factories were for service. We are thinking about everything. But it is the way on which we are asking the government to make a effort for helping the municipality to retain people in the city. But we can't do it without the help of the government. Thank you. Thank you very much. That is very, very interesting. In fact, I had the good fortune of visiting Senegal a few years ago. And I had a very, very nice time there. And a very nice memory of the people in Senegal. So nice to hear about your experience. We will come back to you in a little while to do some follow-up on that. But let me now move on to Runa and ask him to maybe share a little bit of the experience from the other side of the world, northern part of Europe in the Sami lands where you are also seeing, I believe, quite a lot of impacts on biodiversity and affecting people's livelihoods and displacement as well. Runa, please, you have the floor. Thank you, Salim. So the Sami culture and livelihood is nature-based. We fish, we hunt, we harvest from the nature, and a lot of us are reindeer herders following the reindeer herds on their instinctive migration for pastures. This is our livelihoods and our culture. Now, as a nature-based culture, we are very vulnerable to climate change and also the loss of biodiversity. For instance, changing snow conditions is a problem for reindeer herding. We are often seeing unstable weather during the winters, now more than we used to before. We get snow and then we get rain, and then snow and rain again, which creates ice making the pasture underneath the snow inaccessible for the reindeer. We call it locked pastures. This is one of many examples, and it is, I think it's fair to say that it's beyond that that our livelihood and our culture is directly and negatively affected by climate change itself. But if I may, Salim, I'd like to draw your attention to how we're also expanding cities, the building of infrastructure, and the climate solutions are creating a new set of problems for us, causing biodiversity loss on a massive scale in the Arctic. For instance, large mining projects to extract minerals that are said to be needed for the electrification of cars, for instance, and at least the expansion of wind power, which has exploded in our Arctic areas and in all the Nordic countries. The impacts of these so-called green solutions are massive on nature and biodiversity, and for the Sami people it totally destroys important areas for our traditional livelihoods. Thank you very much, Runaar, and thanks for reminding that everything that we think of a solution comes with its own problems. So green power we think of is a good thing, but for the Sami people it may not be such a good thing, so we need to be aware of that as we go forward. Thank you very much. So let me now turn to Ola. You've heard two very good examples of underlying environmental and biodiversity loss factors that are driving people to migrate, and I know the IOM has to come in when the crisis occurs and the migration happens. I'm very familiar with IOM. I've worked with them in Bangladesh where they are working with the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, and you have to pick up the pieces when the crisis occurs. But to what extent are we able to think about this early on and prevent migration as opposed to deal with migration when it becomes a crisis? Ola, your thoughts please. Thank you very much. And listen with great interest to Mamadou and Runaar explaining the challenges in their regions, and particularly in Runa's case, I'm familiar from my own case, visiting those areas quite frequently and seeing the difference in the snow and rain over time. A few remarks from the IOM suggest it's true that we sometimes get involved when there's the crisis ongoing and there's a need for humanitarian assistance. I think there is, however, a need to be a bit more proactive and to have a whole of government and a whole of society approach to this. And I think over the last decades we've seen an increased interest for global governance looking into all the facets of migration and of course the global compact on migration adopted in 2018. This is a clear case in mind. And also I think in the EU sense we now see with the relatively new commission they have put out their priorities. We had the presentation on the EU act on asylum and migration four weeks ago. We have the priorities for the Green Deal. So I think there is a case for a whole of government approach. And I think there are some areas that probably need to be looked into if we're going to be able to be more proactive. And of course data is one of them to collect the data, but also to do the analysis of the data. What is the link between biodiversity and migration? We have some clear examples from the previous presenters, but I think more can be done into that. But also looking into what degree migration can also be an answer to this. How can migration actually be an agent for development and how can migrants also mitigate some of the problems? And how can the different actors in these big governments or international organizations, regional and national governments facilitate the migration that is needed, but also take the advantages of it. So I think that there is a lot of things to do. I think there are some frameworks that can be looked into, but we need more data. We need more analysis for that. Thank you. Thank you very much for that. I think good advice for us to be proactive and plan ahead as much as possible and anticipate problems before they become a crisis, while we can still deal with them as a problem and not have to deal with them as a crisis. Let me now move on to Tosca from Italy. Tosca, we are all looking forward to the Italian and the British joint chairing of COP26 next year of the UN Framework Convention. These are very much issues under the Framework Convention, both linking to biodiversity, also with migration under the issue of loss and damage. These are both politically sensitive on the one hand, but also important for us to recognize and think about on the other hand. And we would be very interested to hear what you think about it and perhaps a little bit about what the Italian government is thinking about these issues going forward. Well, thanks Salim for introducing the panel with the very stimulating question. We started this endeavor with the UK of being co-presidents of COP26 in, let's say, in a different international setting. Now, after the pandemic, we still need to strive to fight climate change. And what is important is that we have an opportunity now and a more duty to build back better. And that is possible if the Paris Agreement, the 2030 agenda and European Green Deal will be aligned in this post-pandemic recovery. And so tackling climate change and getting all governments to push for more ambitious solutions, not just in mitigation, but also in raising investment in clean technology, diverting from polluting industries which affect biodiversity. And engaging in climate for finance will be crucial aspects of our co-presidency. Let me finish saying that we will have with the UK a magic star alignment because we will hold the presidency in 2020, the UK will have the presidency in 2007, we will co-host COP26 in partnership in 2021. So we see this as a unique opportunity to take advantage of the synergy and see that a different model of musilateral fora can tackle climate change and its social, economic, political implications, including the protection of biodiversity and also the issue of migration. So that is more or less what we see, an holistic framework in the COP26, priorities and the biodiversity and nature-based solution, which I can go deeper later, will be a strong part of our president. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Tosca. That's very, very interesting. And I'll try and come back to you on that a little later. But let us hear now from Heliodoro. Heliodoro, you have a long experience of advising the European Union, particularly on their aid policy for developing countries, particularly in Africa. From your experience and analysis, how do you see this issue of preemptive investment to prevent the problem and the crisis of migration taking place in the countries in Africa? For example, we heard the example of Senegal, for example, from Mamadou. Are there opportunities in the European Union's budgeting and financial planning for these issues to be taken up at a early stage rather than at a late stage? Heliodoro, you have the floor. Yes, thank you, Salim, for the question. In fact, I mean, it's clear that climate change and the loss of biodiversity is becoming increasingly contributing to poor displacement and also economic migration. And even though sometimes the talk about an explosion in environmental refugees is, of course, exaggerated. But this means that, of course, the use of our external aid instruments is to try to mitigate environmental changes is irrelevant. And of course, slow onset environmental events such as biodiversity tend to be more relevant for economic migration, whereas rapid onset events such as natural disasters created by climate change are relatively more relevant for displacement. Both are relevant for both types of migration. And the thing is that the European Union, another donor of the International Committee, has been making over the last 15 years a lot of effort to channel an increasing share of their aid resources towards climate change. And even though the main objective for this was not migration policy or to address the cost of migration, as something said, but in fact it had this benefit in the sense that we can discuss how it was done. For example, what I pretty much learned in my research is that there was a too much effort to mitigation, climate change mitigation, not sufficiently for adaptation, which is, I know you're an expert on adaptation, but it's much more relevant from the point of view of displacement and migration. But we can come back to that as one of my recommendations for the European Union. But what is important is that, much as we have done a lot of effort for the EU, the EU is not only the world's major donor of aid, but also is the main contributor of ODA for climate change. So if we are irresponsible, the EU and its member states for about 60 percent of total finance for climate change for developing countries and its share, this has been increasing. So this is very important. We should have some satisfaction, if not enough, of what we're doing. The problem with this conference is that we're doing this in terms of biodiversity. Unfortunately, biodiversity is a bit suffering from this political focus and attention on climate change, as if it was the only part of the problem. We're not doing enough on climate change, but certainly that also diverging some attention from diversity. The new biodiversity strategy for 2030 tries to correct this. It's very important. It's great that the European Union did not just focus on climate change, but it has managed to address this. But the problem is that we have put our money where our world is. And here is where we have, yes, we have not such an ambitious something, commenced trade for the land so far, remind that hopefully we will develop it, and not only as an international community on biodiversity. Let me give you some examples. In our new macro-financial, multi-annual financial perspective, our seven-year long-term budget for the EU that we are discussing, we are planning to increase. Actually, the Commission has proposed that 25% of poor spending should be climate-relevant. That's very good. That's up from 20% in the previous MFA. But actually, the European Council in July, in the context of announcing also the new European, new generation instrument for in response to the COVID crisis, which is at its core has the recovery and resilience facility, we've announced a target even more ambitious for when you count the spending of the MFA, this new instrument which amounts to 750 billion euros, which will be mostly obtained by borrowing the capital market, the target for climate change will be 30%. But there's no target for specific targets for biodiversity. Take for example, the so-called En-Ditch instrument, which is our main, it's going to be our main instrument for development. They're going to amalgamate this instrument, most of our instruments. And it has, in the proposal that Commission has been rejected by the Council, a target so-called horizontal spending target of 25% for climate change-related, but it has not one for biodiversity. Or take for example, the European Investment Bank, which is going to become the most important public bank for climate change. It has targeted 35% of the lending operations outside or under the so-called external lending mandate after climate change, but there's no one on biodiversity. So we can do much more, but of course we have to be also aware of the fact that the two things are mutually complementing each other, climate change is good. We have to be careful about the proliferation of targets. The European Parliament has been proposing the introduction of a biodiversity mainstreaming target of 10% in the context of the new MFA. But we have to tackle how this is done. We have to kind of start this jointly because otherwise we will lead to proliferation of targets. And since there is interaction between two, we can, for example, have a sub-target with an overall target for climate change. I mean, we know that 80% of biodiversity expenditure counts as climate spending under the real market, so we have to be taking this into account. But we can design joint targets for both of these, but we have to think what we're going to do and we have to lead by example also in the international setting in the context of next year to come to see how we can further international commitment with more resources towards biodiversity. But I can talk about this. Thank you. That was very, very good. And in fact, what you said was very close to my heart that the climate change investments are going not enough to adaptation and skewed in favor of mitigation. Not that we don't need mitigation, but we also need to take adaptation into account and even more biodiversity linkages as well. And there are win-wins to be had in taking this multi-sectoral approach going forward. Let me go back to Mamadou and ask you, Mamadou, what would be your advice to our friends in Europe from your perspective in Senegal? What kind of investments do you feel would be helpful to both help the preservation of biodiversity, conservation of biodiversity and at the same time enable jobs, employment, people to stay, not migrate or even come back from Europe to Senegal and invest and take activities and do things there. Can you mention one or two things that you might offer as advice to our friends from Europe who are listening in on this call? Mamadou, please. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Salim. Salim, I hear a lot of interest, Mrs. Toskana and Mr. Elio Dorro, who speak about the new European politics about biological change and climatic change and immigration. I went in Copenhagen. I see all about this guy. The agreement of Paris put a lot of hopes about green funds. But now what I hope is to make Europeans, to make the green funds, to use the green funds for stopping migration in Africa. It is. There is a lot of funds. We agree to follow in Africa. But we have to use it for maintaining young people in Africa. With the green funds, we can put a lot of new work green funds in Africa. And using this opportunity of found green, we can try to maintain a lot of young Africa in Africa. Other thing, there is a lot of migration of Africans or Senegalese people who are now in Europe. They have a new experience about a lot of factories, everything. They can return in Africa with a project. But they don't have money to do it. To make them coming back in Africa with green funds to stay in Africa and to improve their country. We have a lot of lands. We have some rivers. We have water in our ground. But we have that found to get out to make a short to put how to do it. How to have a lot of forest here for a day. But it is our problem. A lot of young people can want to make a farmer wants to do something else. Because it is why our Europeans, people during the course of Italian course in 26, we think we must put a big topic about climate change and immigration. Because now it is a real fact in Africa. Economic migration is done because of climate change. People don't find on their country why to stay because they can't find our food or works to do something. Because why I hope that in the next COP in Italy, we have a big focus on climate change and immigration. How to use the green funds to improve mitigation and adaptation against climate change in Africa. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mamadou. Some very, very good sound advice that we can take forward and I'll ask Tosca to respond to that in a few minutes. But let me now move to Runar again and ask you a question. Runar, I have a specific interest. You know, you represent the Sami indigenous communities of the northern part of Europe. And indigenous people have a very, very important role for centuries and millennia in terms of preservation and of nature and living of nature. And how do you, what is your experience as a representative of the indigenous people of northern Europe? When you have to deal with, you know, central governments of Norway and the other countries where the Sami people are a minority indigenous people. Do you get heard as your voice listen to, to what extent are you able to bring in your deep knowledge and experience of working with nature that many other people don't have, particularly those of us who live in cities. We've lost all of that culture, which you now have. I'm very intrigued to hear what your take on that is, Runar, please. So we are definitely trying our best to have a voice heard on a number of levels from local government to national government, but also at the European level and at the EU and at the national level. And I can say that as an indigenous representative institution within the Norwegian democratic system, we do have a lot of mechanisms to consult with the government and issues on all issues relating to the Sami people and the Sami culture, but also specifically relating to land use on a regular basis. Whether we are heard or not, that's a different question, but we're definitely in consultation. We also have mechanisms to raise objections to changing land use on a municipal and local level. Now on the European level, we are trying our best to influence the EU so that biodiversity is being prioritized now when the European Green Deal is being rolled out, as was mentioned here earlier. Our culture is dependent on it and the Sami use of nature is also, in our view, it's also a part of maintaining the biodiversity in the Arctic as it is a sustainable use of nature. So for us, it is important that the climate solutions are not being used as a moral argument to extinguish indigenous cultures, as I mentioned earlier. Another point that I wanted to make is that what I'm hearing from Sami colleagues is that there is concern related to the fact that the EU states in which our people reside in Sweden and Finland, they are often able to negotiate exceptions from EU regulations. For instance, on forestry and forest conservation and also on issues relating to minerals. It is important that such a practice of exceptions does not, that it will not be able to limit the reach of the biodiversity strategy because it is so important for us to be heard there. Now also I mentioned the international stage, so we are Sami people, we are also a plot of, we go and try to influence the climate negotiations, for example, under UNFCCC. So we have been able to, together with a lot of our indigenous friends and indigenous peoples globally, been able to create an indigenous platform at the climate negotiations. It covered the local communities and indigenous peoples platform and it was a constitutive body established at COP 24 in Katowice. So I just wanted to make one appeal to Miss Baroko, I guess, who is working on COP preparations now that this platform, I hear that definitely needs funding to be able to work out well. So that is one aspect that is important to remember in order to ensure indigenous voices are being heard at this level too. Thank you. Excellent. We will ask Tosca to take that into consideration when we come to her again. But let me just go to Ola now and ask you a question. My understanding of the IOM is that you have your heads up to your heads in humanitarian crisis management. Now, within the organization of IOM, to what extent do you think you can talk about these kinds of long-term issues, biodiversity and environment, talking about preventing future migration, where you have your hands more than full dealing with the immediate crisis that you have on your hands right now. Is there any bandwidth for these longer-term considerations within an institution that is crisis managing like yours? Thank you for the question. Yes, we are crisis management, but not only. I think we have other capacities and competencies as well. There is a team in the Brussels office and in headquarters and around in different IOM offices following the issue of biodiversity and how climate change is influencing migratory floods. So we, of course, follow this closely even now and I would also say that again, this is a bit of an institutional issue. We are, as you know, since 2016 as UN-related agency. I mentioned in my previous intervention the Global Compact on Migration, which includes the adverse impacts on climate change and environmental degradations in Objectives 2 and 5. We work together with other UN organizations. The Secretary General already in, it was in March 2018, put up something called the UN Migration Network, where we coordinate with other UN organizations, basically all interested partners, but there is also a core of UN organizations as UNHCR, which CHR, UNDP, OTSHA, UNICEF and others. So there is a core of organizations and we are now together with them trying to put up a fund. We have clustered, or the UN Migration Network has clustered the 23 Objectives of the Global Compact into five clusters, trying to raise funding for this. So there is, I think, on the overall global governance side, there has been a lot of achievements over the last 20 years since Kofi Annan started addressing the lack of UN comprehensive policies in the area of migration and has been part of the UN system. So working together with other UN organizations, also working together with national and regional government, but also regional organizations, and of course being very important and very liberal, but also the African Union and regional organizations. So I think this is a bit, we have our competencies, but we also need to pool our competencies with others. And there was a mentioning of the UNFCCC Task Force by displacement that we are a member of this group. Migration issues are also part of the UN Convention to combat dissertification. So I think the UN is picking up the migration parts. There needs to be a comparison between different strands of the UN work and other organizations work. So yes, we're trying as much as we can to be part of the solution and come up with the good examples in all of this. Thank you very much, Ola. Let me now turn to Tosca. Tosca, you already have a couple of questions. One from Runaar on the Indigenous opportunity for the Indigenous people to participate in COP26. And you also mentioned the issue of nature-based solutions. I would like to add another element for you to share some thoughts on. As I understand it, Italy will be hosting a pre-COP meeting in Milan that will focus on youth in particular. And I think that we haven't mentioned youth in this conversation so far. But in my view, there are very, very important cohort of people that we need to think about. And they are the future migrants or non-migrants. Whatever happens is going to happen to the young people in all our countries. So if you could try and address the questions that you've heard. And please feel free to share your thoughts. Tosca, you have the floor. Okay. First of all, I wish to thank Ola because he gives me the opportunity to give a hint on our policy coherence. And with that, it's a big question on how to integrate all the different aspects of the fight or climate change. The debate adaptations versus mitigation is an example of the fact that everything is complementary. And that when you fight the desertification, you fight for biodiversity, you fight the effect of climate change, you help prevent unwanted migration. So you have a policy framework that we need to be addressed at COP26. Both a governance problem, a resource problem and how we are managing to put all these interlinked questions in a picture that drives to action. Well, the top thing that enough people see and drive to action is, as you know already in another task, but rest assured that the Italian co-presidency has very, very clear the fact that all these issues are interlinked. That the debate on adaptation and biodiversity is extremely promising because protecting biodiversity, we are in fact preventing a lot of protecting biodiversity we are doing adaptation and preventing all the root causes of what we are facing now. On the use, well, the use is the focus of the Italian co-presidency. We will host the pre-COP, which is a negotiating event at the state and official level, but we will also host back-to-back the youth COP. The youth COP together with the United Nations Office for the Youth will give worldwide youth all countries we hope to be represented and opportunity to interact with the official delegations. So the consultations with the youth will be flowing into the negotiating rooms, which I think is extremely, extremely interesting because this is the first time we also are working on what happened with the youth event of 2019 at the UN, where we took inspiration from to have this youth COP. So our focus on youth is very, very important to broaden the perspective, and we will involve a civil society, the business, the academy, local authorities. What we need for this is to have the widest possible multi-stakeholder approach. So I hope that with this event we will also be able to address the wide spectrum of stakeholders. And the youth, as you said, has a bigger component into the migration debate. So I think that their fresh views and a few slaps on the face of the delegates, if I may say so, are ready to get there. Thank you. So that will be part of our COP. Good, good. I look forward to that. Hopefully we can all come to Italy for the COP at that time. So let me now move on to Heliodorus and ask you a question now. Given your experience and knowledge of how the European Union works and also your description of the enormous amounts of money that you quoted earlier, my question is how does one do these things in a practical way? You know, allocating big amounts of money is one thing, but making them effective is really to me a much more difficult question. And you've heard all the conversations and you have a lot of experience here. I'd really love to hear from you a little bit about how does one do this and how can we influence and is it possible at all for outsiders like me sitting in Bangladesh to influence the decision making within the European Union on how they're going to allocate these resources and what are they going to do about it. And at this also let me say for the participants, if there are any questions, please feel free to put them in. I think we'll have a few minutes for the speakers to answer participants' questions. Heliodorus, you have the floor. Thank you. Thank you, Salim. I think one simple and concrete recommendation is, especially when it comes to adaptation related projects, is to talk to the locals. I think and that's why we have a network of delegations that manage RA. We don't manage RA from Brussels. We agree on the big numbers in Brussels, but it's up to them to really see what's happening and think of projects that can meet several objectives that can be good from an environmental point of view, that can give jobs as well, that can help adapt, whether it's to buy a diversity change or to climate change. So a lot of has to do with trying to find in the field those projects. And actually, for example, if you look at our future mainstream for international cooperation, we have, as I said, a target of 25% for climate change related projects, but we have another target of 10% for projects aimed at addressing the root causes of migration. So all this envelope of which is a forgot the figure, but quite a few billion think it's about, that's been reduced by the country in the recent negotiations, but it's still about 80 billion euros over seven years to try to come up with projects which can be relevant for all three objectives. We can have projects which are good for biodiversity adaptation, but can also be good for environmental point of view of things that can be good for biodiversity and climate change. So that's one thing, but I think in terms of the target, you know, the discussion in Brussels in terms of what, I think there is all this discussion that has also the parliament is pushing about, for example, this target of 10% for biodiversity. But I think it's important to think whether this is a good idea or we might want to do something but perhaps not necessarily to have a separate target of 10% for biodiversity, but to consider, for example, a sub-target within the overall target we have climate change or to have a target that is encompassing both of them, expenditure for either climate-sensitive products or biodiversity. But beyond the whole debate about targets, which in the end I believe is not so crucial, what is important is the total amount of funds that we are going to devolve. And also the use of other instruments. If you see the communication on the Greenville or the biodiversity communication, we talk about other instruments. We have, for example, trade policy. We are now going to require for any new free trade agreement that countries respect and implement the Paris law or a number of international commercial environments. We are now considering, we are reviewing the regulation on the generalized system of preferences, our main policy to grant preference to developing countries. I'm actually part of the working group in the Commission that works on that. Well, there's a whole debate about, we have, for example, the GSB Plus is linked to the respect of 17 international conventions that countries must ratify and implement in order to benefit from these trade preferences. Well, we realize that we have not sufficient representation of international environmental protections and commitments, so we're going to bring this in most likely. So we can use other instruments or whether it is, for example, our new taxonomy of sustainable activities for the finances for the capital market, our green budget techniques that we are pioneers in is the use of green taxation. We can, through our political line over through other instruments, also try to encourage our developing partners to introduce regulatory framework policies that are conducive to fighting biodiversity laws or climate change. So these are concrete things that I think we could do, we could do more about that, but most importantly, we must also lead as we have been doing in climate change, by example, as I say, and I think it's crucial we have a very important step with this new biodiversity strategy. Now we must translate it into an ambitious leading position at the next year's call and both in terms of targets. We have very ambitious targets in our biodiversity communication for restoration, for protection of land, that's very good, but also we need to have commitments in the financial area ourselves and also encourage them to the partners. When we leave, we are much more likely to be influential. So this is our big challenge is how we, from now to this call, we do sufficient steps in implementing this strategy put forward by the communications so that by the time conference comes, we have already demonstrated or we will still have to do a lot of things in detail that we are leading by example. Very good, very good. Our macro approach, our international political macro approach, so this led by Brassus, but also about the everyday design and identification of projects by our network of delegations taking into account the fact that migration and environmental change are so connected. Absolutely, very good. Thank you very much. Those are extremely practical suggestions for taking this forward and I hope that that will happen. We are getting a few questions in from the panelists or the participants and let me share one or two and invite our panelists to respond to them. Interesting question from Marcela Passotti, who says climate change affects the whole world, not only developing countries in quotes. Europe is directly affected too. How do you think migrant populations living in Europe could contribute to mitigate the challenges of climate change? How could we leverage the potential contribution of migrant populations inside Europe to meet the objectives of the Green Deal? Interesting question. The migrant population within Europe also has a potential role to play and do any of you wish to respond to that? Any thoughts on that? Especially our European friends, anybody please feel free? I can try starting yesterday. Okay, good, good. Go ahead. If it's about as the person proposing the question said and as we've heard also from the panel the climate change doesn't only affect, it affects globally and also in the northern parts of Europe but coming back to the role of migrants. I think one clear part is where migrants can, which is in terms of remittances and not just financial remittances. We all know that the financial remittances are far bigger than the official development assistance but there are other forms of remittances also, knowledge and other things that migrants can contribute to the countries of origin, what they have achieved in other countries. I think that and also building possibly on circular migration schemes where this can be leveraged. So that would be one example that I would like to put forward. Great, thank you very much. Let me move on to another question. This comes from SUM. It says the MFF allocates specific funding for climate change. Often migration is not necessarily being considered by the national actors involved in climate finance. How can we sensitize the actors to consider migration related outputs? A good question. I think it's a valid point that when the climate programs are designed, these green new deals are designed, migration doesn't seem to play a role or the connection to migration does not seem to be self-evident. How does one convince them that the issue of migration also needs to be taken into account there? Any thoughts? Heliodorus, you probably have the best experience in advising European Union on this. Any thoughts on this? Yeah, well, it's a matter. It's true. Again, we have this focus on climate change and the connection to migration is not very articulated. Although, as I said, in the national section of this communication, there is an explicit mention to the link between climate change policy and for displacement and migration. But I think it's a matter of finding as we... I mean, that's why it's useful to have other targets for migration and other spending targets. But the challenge is how we can combine them. There's no point in having climate change, biodiversity targets and then migration targets without realizing how connected they can be. So I think it's a little bit about educating the people who are identifying the projects. We can also force the process by having sometimes a target that tries to overlap the different objectives. But yes, we have been within the Commission talking a lot about this. I mean, I can say that we talked about this, the interlinkage between the two things. But from there to seeing whether it's really going to be transformed into a real project, we need a few more years to see whether it happens. But we are doing this in process. We are also inviting agents in our delegation that manage our aid workshops, trainings that talk about these things. But yes, it's an issue of culture and of actual implementation. I'm not sure there are magic solutions, but I think what I can say is that the Commission is increasingly aware of this and trying to find ways to address those issues. It's the first time we have, it's my target for migration, on a reasonable cost of migration. The first time we have a sort of thought proposal. We have it for climate change. We are reaching this direction, but we will see. Thank you. Thank you very much. I think we are coming to the end of our time allocation. We just have a few minutes left. I want to give each of you the floor for just one minute to give us a little concluding thought in terms of what do you think needs to be done next. Just a quick one minute next step recommendation if you like from each of you. Starting again with Mamadu. Mamadu, a one minute takeaway message. Thank you. I hear with a lot of interest the question who are now discussing, but I hope that we must focus now to how to have a lot of found for improving, for promoting green jobs in the area where we have problem of biodiversity loss. With the green jobs, we can have some urban project who can help to return and make mitigation in a lot of countries. Then in the European Union or everywhere, we must orient the green farms on the green jobs. And during the next step in the European talks of Italian, the problem, the topic of migration and the biodiversity loss must be a big topic on which the link must be done and we must focus on it during the next step of international discussion. I think all of us, thank you. Thank you very much Mamadu. Let me now move to Runar. Hopefully Tosta will invite you to Milan for the COP in Italy. But what next? What do you want to see happen next? I would like to see, as I mentioned earlier, that the European Union, for instance, makes sure to not forget the biodiversity aspect when they roll out the Green New Deal. It can't be too much climate change but we actually need to preserve nature also because a lot of cultures and peoples, livers are dependent on nature, for instance, the ones of indigenous peoples. So thanks very much for a very interesting discussion. Thank you, Runar. Thank you for your contributions. Ula, last words from your side. Thank you. I want to come back to a few points I've already raised. I think the need to collect and disseminate and analyse data is extremely important to see the links and also to listen to the migrants themselves to understand why they migrate. I think also to have a comprehensive approach and governance, regardless of what level, because this is not something that you can only address at the global or local level. You need to have the different levels working in synergy and avoid silos. And I think there are some clear possibilities now with the COP and to see how also the EU, since we are in the EU perspective, the EU and the UN can work together on this. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ula. Tosca, some final thoughts from your side? Okay. Let me share something from the experience of the field, because we've been talking about projects. So let me share what can be done in practice to see how the link with the fight to keep biodiversity can be linked to the job creation locally. For instance, when you try to increment agriculture productivity in the vulnerable countries, you are stabilizing the population, you are getting them a better skills, you are doing adaptation, you are presenting biodiversity and creating a market for small producers. When you fight with, for instance, FAO, UN women, drought and climate change towards a sustainable agriculture, you are creating investment for women and the youth. So I think that the voices from the field could be the biggest contribution we need for having a successful COP. Listening to the constituency that have affected the climate change and not only the governments, if I can give this suggestion. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much, Tosca. Hilio Doro, some last thoughts to share. Okay. My last question would be, again, let's not forget about biodiversity, in particular in our eighth strategy towards developing countries. Let's try to go also in the field for projects that are win-win strategies, win-win projects that combine different things. And here what Mamadou was proposing, it's a very good idea to use green funds to not only create direct jobs on promising industries and green industries, but also do it in a way that can help people adapt to climate change or that can help mitigate climate change or biodiversity loss. So we're trying to find these areas of intersection that are win-win strategies for all. Thank you very much. Thank you all of our speakers, participants for an extremely interesting ad-filt discussion. I hope all our participants who listened also felt so. I'm not going to attempt to summarize the discussion. I'm sure the organizers will bring out a summary document later on. But I will take this opportunity to share a few of my own thoughts from where I sit in Dhaka, Bangladesh and on the issues that I work on here. So in my country, Bangladesh, which I'm sure everybody is aware is one of the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, particularly the low-lying coastal area of Bangladesh where we are already seeing potential impacts of people having to move from losing livelihoods and having to move and ending up in Dhaka City, which is the biggest city in Bangladesh, the fastest-growing mega city. So what we are looking at is whether we can make people in Dhaka be created in these other towns for what we call make them resilient migrant-friendly towns and invest in those towns for economic and education and health services so that these potential migrants will have to leave their livelihoods in the low-lying coastal area, don't end up in the slums of Dhaka, but they can go to these other towns within Bangladesh. These are not sending them out of the country but keeping them in Bangladesh, but looking at assisted or facilitated migration as a strategy, a second-order strategy of adaptation and at the same time doing this in a nature-based solutions manner that integrates it with the preservation of the wetlands and the forests and the soils that we have. And it's something that we are coming up with ideas. I'm not saying we have solved it, but it is a very promising area that we feel that is something that can be done. And we would be very happy to share knowledge with all of our partners and friends in Europe going forward. There's a lot of learning to be done across borders, south-south and south-north and north-south on this issue as we meet this global challenge. So with that, I'm going to call it a day for now. Hand over to our organizers if they want to have a final say from their side. Is Katie or any of the others going to take over? Hi, Salimo. Thank you very much. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Yeah, no. Just to say a huge thank you to you and to all the panelists. This is a really, really interesting discussion. All the participants, thanks for the questions that came in. Sorry we couldn't get to all of them, but you can find the recording of this event. We'll share that on Twitter at myom.eu and you can also get the tweets and things from the event and further information on that if you check out our Twitter account. So thanks once again and watch this space for this conversation to continue. Thank you very much. Bye bye.