 My name is Mark Abkowitz. I'm a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Vanderbilt University. I also serve as the director of the Vanderbilt Center for Environmental Management Studies. Our session was on loss and damage estimation, and I think the entire topic is a challenge because it's the area that is the bridge that gap needs to be filled between communities that are in need of that adaptation and the international donor community that needs to be convinced that adaptation and adaptation strategies are worthwhile given that they've been focusing predominantly on mitigation activities in the past. I think the most interesting question came from a woman in the audience that asked whether or not being able to make progress in loss and damage as both a policy priority and a technical method has the potential to be transformative in moving climate change adaptation forward. In other words, is it a significant enough issue that if resolved properly enables the climate change adaptation process to move much more proactively into dealing with future situations. I think the area with the least agreement was the way in which you measure loss and damage. I think it really depends a lot on the spectrum that you view loss and damage across, the extent to which you look at non-economic losses, and also the extent to which you look at things on a temporal scope, whether there are issues that really prevail more as loss and damage in the short run versus issues that become more apparent in the long run. I think the most important lessons learned from this session is that this is a very important topic that I would call critical and emerging, and yet we know very little in terms of the potential for knowledge and awareness in this topical area. I liken it in some respects to baby and diapers that we know needs to grow up into a mature adult. We're really at the diaper stage, and I think people now understand that that's both a challenge and an opportunity, a challenge because there's so much to be learned and so many different ways that we need to articulate our views on the subject, but an opportunity because we are going through a significant discovery stage on this topic, and once we reach a critical mass of understanding, then we can really leverage that knowledge.