 It's a pleasure to be here with you today and thank you for joining us for what is doubtless one of the key Panels and questions that we have to address here and beyond Why is this linkage between a fragility conflict migration and environment so important a Senior director for environment natural resources I find myself constantly having to make the case that environment is not just about a Specific toad or a specific fish or a panda bear that it really is at its core About people and that seems obvious, but when you start to look at Situations of crisis. It's very very difficult to get environmental long-term environmental considerations on the table As I say on a good day in many governments, and I include my own I'm from Columbia Environmental issues are very difficult to have to sign the priority that they deserve when you talk about development And then when you move into situations of fragility and conflict becomes ever more so because there are so many other pressing Short-term immediate urgent humanitarian needs So that's our first challenge really how do you embed environment long-term environmental considerations? Understanding that it's not just about the environment that it is about building in the resilience to human systems, whether they be biophysical Economic or social and this is all the more urgent because as we all know with what's happening across the city Climate change is a massive threat multiplier And when you have situations of very marginal land Marginal people limited or restricted access and use of increasingly scarce and degraded resources That would be central to long-term human well-being and security. Well, then you have a potent mix that needs to be addressed One myth that I want to put out there at front is what I call the myth of Renovability as a human species we've been amazingly good at transforming our physical environment and Turning it into hauls like this into cities like Paris into countries like France Which is fantastic in terms of what it has meant for human well-being and development But we have been lulled into the sense that we can tech fix and Imagine our way and sort of innovate our way out of anything and innovation is fantastic But there are tipping points beyond which degradation is not reversible One of my unfortunately favorite examples is the great banks caught fishery And if you go to Nova Scotia today and walk up and down that coast you will see Communities whose livelihoods have been displaced have been degraded are gone forever Because that great fishery despite all the sustainable management efforts that came afterwards has not recovered And if we just go to Google Earth and look at the Aral Sea and remember what it wasn't what it has become Then we start to understand the myth of renewability and why action implementation is so urgent So of course migration crisis and conflict have many conflicts I don't want to overstate only the environmental dimension But there is a very key role for environmental governance And there is a key role for making sure that we can keep in place Functional systems and services in a natural space 75% of the world's poor today live In rural areas and that means that these people depend on natural resources Not just for their livelihoods, but also for social safety nets And when the social safety needs erode and disappear The impacts together with those disappearing or eroded livelihoods can be very devastating So degradation I would say and I would invite us to understand it as simply to translate it into really simple terms A loss of opportunity and what environmental management is about is keeping opportunities keeping those options open So people have hope so people can think of investing Their resources their effort their children in a better tomorrow So let me turn to what I think is the second big challenge and that's what I call the short-termism We operate in budget cycles or electoral cycles or project cycles And a lot of the environmental degradation Requires investments and efforts over a really long period and as human beings we're also not that good at that So a challenge that we have a challenge. I face at the bank I challenge I faced before when I was government a challenge I faced before when I was working with NGOs is how do we overcome that short-termism And start to put in longer term How do we measure results over decades and how do we build the appetite for that kind of results over long term with our boards with our parliaments with our taxpayers So I would just finalize by saying that We have To understand that this is environmental migration is not a new form of migration, but climate change makes it different I think we have a great panel ahead of us A panel that will really delve into these root causes But above all into solutions and above all into trying to understand what the options was are We've we're culminating a completely amazing year. We've had finance for development. We have yoga. We've had the stg's and now We should have a Paris agreement. So it's been a fantastic year in terms of policy and frameworks and agreements The day after the COP I would like to say that that's the day when 2016 starts and 2016 and beyond has got to be about implementation So what I would like to ask the panel today Is to forget this as an academic or an intellectual exercise As if we're going to implement if we heat this call for action this driving urgent Call for action. What do we need to do? What do each one of us need to do? What do we need to incentivize others to do? That's our challenge and that's the challenge. I would like to pose to the panel. Thank you