 Are we ready? Ready. Good morning or afternoon with everyone. Buenos dias o buenas tardes con todos ustedes. Welcome to the webinar that for nature to save the Amazon. Bienvenidos al webinar de canje de deuda para salvar la masonía. This event is co-sponsored by the Center for Human Rights and Environment, the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and Stand Earth. Este evento ha sido co-spiciado por el Centro de Derechos Humanos y Ambiente, el Instituto para la Governancia y Desarrollo Sostenible y Stand Earth. Antes de comenzar, me gustaría presentar las instrucciones para habilitar la interpretación. Before we start, I'd like to share the instructions for turning on interpretation. On the Zoom bar, you will find the interpretation globe on your screen. Please click on this icon and this menu will be displayed. If you're bilingual, you might as well just turn off the interpretation tool and then please click the language for which you would like to hear the audio. The last step is to meet the original audio so you have a great experience with the interpretation. Con respecto a las instrucciones para la interpretación, en primer lugar les voy a pedir que revisen que en su barra de Zoom tengan el icono de interpretación, que es este globo que aparece en su pantalla y está en la barra de Zoom. El siguiente paso, una vez que ustedes hagan click en este icono, se va a desplegar este menú. En caso que ustedes sean bilingües y no necesiten interpretación, pueden marcar como apagado y si no, pueden escoger el idioma en el cual quieren escuchar el audio. Finalmente les pedimos para que mejoren su experiencia con la interpretación que silencien el audio original también. Con esto dicho, me voy a permitir en caso que existieran perdonantes preguntas sobre la interpretación, les vamos a pedir que las incluyen en el chat del webinar. Quiero comenzar, I would like to start this webinar introducing our moderator, Separa Vermen. Separa has been designing environmental campaigns on working on environmental policy in Canada and beyond for over 20 years. She currently is International Program Director at StandEarth. She is an adjunct professor of York University Faculty of Environmental Studies, the co-founder of the Global Oil and Gas Network and the chair of the fossil fuel non-proliferation trading initiative. With all this said, welcome to Separa. Thank you so much, Alicia. And welcome everyone joining us online here at Climate Week and also on Facebook Live. I want to, first of all, again, recognize and thank our co-host center for human rights environment and climate change, the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, and the team at StandEarth for putting together this important conversation. The pandemic crisis has caused, as we all know, a global contraction of economic activity, deepening the debt crisis, already afflicting many countries and causing adverse impacts for hundreds of millions of people around the world, especially of the global south. In the Amazon region, many countries are under pressure to address the crisis, to service their rising debt obligations by accelerating the extraction of fossil fuels, minerals, timber, and other commodities. This, in turn, is increasing the pressures on the Amazon as home to an enormous cultural diversity and the most biologically diverse ecosystem on the planet. In response to the current crisis, there are growing international calls for a suspension or cancellation of debt repayments, along with efforts to strengthen public health outcomes, address social and economic inequality, to tackle the climate and ecological crises as part of an effort to build back better. Debt relief strategies are a vital solution for maintaining the ecosystem intactness that is so important for addressing climate change, the maintenance of biodiversity, for upholding the rights of indigenous peoples and supporting their cultural survival. So this panel will explore issues arising from the current international crisis, the particular challenges facing the Amazon region and the potential for solutions that address interests of its people and safeguard the Amazon's contribution to the health and well-being of the earth and its climate. These issues have implications and this conversation has implications, though not only for the Amazon, but for many regions around the world. Last year, we saw with the first release of the production gap report by the United Nations Environmental Program, Stockholm Environment Institute, and others that we are currently on track to produce 120% more oil, gas and coal than the world can safely burn under a 1.5 degree scenario. What this, what is now being called the production gap must be addressed if we are going to ensure the protection of biodiversity and a safe climate. And of course, especially in the Amazon and many other regions in the world, the human rights of indigenous people. How we do that for countries that are under increasing pressure to continue to drill in mine is a huge outstanding question. We're very lucky today to have an incredible panel of people, of experts from around the world and specifically experts who have experience in the Amazon basin to discuss these issues. So today, we're going to hear from Ulrich Voltz, Director of the Center for Sustainable Finance, University of London. We were planning on hearing from Tuntiak Katan from Cueca, the Pan-Amazonic Organization of Indigenous Federations. Unfortunately, Tuntiak is still struggling with and is ill as a result of COVID-19 and we wish him and his family very well at this very difficult time. We're going to hear also today from Carlos Larea, Professor of Universidad Adino Semin Bolivar Ecuador from Romino Piccolotti, President of the Center for Human Rights and Environment and Climate Change, Senior Advisor at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. Eric Laconte, Executive Director of Jubilee USA Network. And finally, Kevin Gallagher, Professor at Boston University Party School of Global Studies and Director of Boston University Global Development Policy Center. An incredible lineup. We're going to get right to it. I just want to remind people that there is a Q and A button at the bottom of your screen at any time. Please list questions that you might have for any of our presenters. We will try and address them in real time and we'll also bring them forward after we hear from each of our speakers and have a moderated discussion based on the questions that you've posed. So please do use that Q and A. And again, thank you so much for joining us a very busy week at Climate Week this year online. And for those of you joining us on Facebook Live, thank you very much for joining us. We will also be trying to pull your questions into the conversation after we hear from our first speaker. Now after we hear from our speakers. So again, as we heard from Alicia, if you are Spanish speaking, our presentations today will be in English. Please note that at the bottom of your screen you'll see a small globe. There you can turn on a translation for yourself. Without further ado, I turn the floor over to Ulrich Voltz. Thank you Ulrich. Thank you Chapora and thanks Alicia and everyone for organising this. Really a pleasure to be joining this conversation. So I've been asked to provide a bit of a background for the conversation. And indeed Chapora has already laid out the main points but let me highlight why it is so important that we talk about climate action in these times of debt distress. Alicia, if you could please move on to the next slide. So we are already in a deep economic crisis and we have a huge global debt crisis looming. Already before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, large parts of the global south were struggling with huge piles of debt. The IMF and the World Bank in their regular assessments assessed that almost half of the lower income countries were at higher risk or already in debt distress. And of course with economic collapse during the pandemic, things have become much, much worse. And we're still, we still don't know where the bottom end is of the crisis but we've seen steep declines in output. And at the same time, governments had to step up, ratchet fiscal spending to support population, try to keep health systems afloat, try to secure jobs and so on. And this has caused big holes in public finances. And so there will also be enormous amounts needed to finance recoveries. And so this is putting public finances across the board into difficult positions, but for many developing countries which were really struggling already before and where the debt capacity is very low, this is really dramatic. Umtat put out some estimates that suggests that public external debt that need to be serviced this year or next year are in the order of magnitude between two and a half and three and a half trillion US dollars. So big amounts of money that need to be spent while governments are facing urgent needs on spending, on stabilizing the situation, health systems and so on. There have also been some estimates suggesting that large piles of outstanding sovereign external debt will be defaulted on over the next coming months. And we have already seen, for example, just this week, Zambia defaulting on its external debt and many, many more will be following for sure. Please the next slide. And this debt crisis is unfolding while of course we are also facing another crisis which is no less dramatic. And that is the climate crisis. Climate scientists are very clear that we have very, very little time left to bring down carbon emissions, move towards low carbon or zero carbon economies to prevent catastrophic climate change. All of us, we are seeing almost on a daily basis how the current impacts of climate change are already playing out, be it forest fires in California or floods in Pakistan and all around the world you have all the time examples of how dramatic the situation already is. And this is still kind of the start. So there is a very, very urgent need for large-scale spending in adaptation in all countries, but especially in developing countries to climate-proof societies and economies and make them more resilient to the effect of climate change we will be seeing anyway, even if we will end up with a benign 1.5 centigrade scenario. And of course, if we're moving towards two-degree or three-degree worlds, much, much more investment will be needed in adaptation. And so we have a very urgent pressure to scale up investment in adaptation. And of course we also have a huge need to scale up investment in mitigation. So we need to change our energy structure then so on. And the problem is that there is really very, very little time to move on with climate action. We're also facing other pressing environmental problems. Biodiversity loss is also continuing at very rapid pace. And again, this is something that needs to be addressed very urgently because otherwise we will face extinction from this direction. And this can not be reversed either. So we have around a decade to avoid catastrophic climate change and also address the problem of biodiversity loss. However, and if you could please move to the next slide, it's going to be very unlikely that we will see any meaningful climate action both on the mitigation and adaptation side and also in protecting biodiversity and so on if countries are bogged down by debt crisis. And as Chipora indicated in her intro statements, there is actually a big risk that financial pressures will drive countries, governments to extract natural resources as much as they can so that they can keep the cash flowing. So not only is the debt crisis undermining the capacity to proactively invest in climate adaptation, mitigation, environmental protection, but also it is creating incentives to do exactly the opposite and worsen the crisis even more. So this is basically the dilemma that we're facing. And of course, we must not forget in all this that the current crisis is also a huge humanitarian tragedy in many parts of the world. Poverty levels are rising again and many countries simply don't have the means to provide social safety net. So we have this huge debt crisis, the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis and also huge social crisis. And all of that, we cannot treat separately. We need to think about these things in a unified framework and we need to discuss significant debt relief so that we can have meaningful investment, public investment from governments to address each of these problems. So we do need a global effort at debt relief. And if you could please move on to the next slide. And it's really important, I believe, to emphasize that we're dealing here with this systemic problem. So we're not just looking at debt crisis in the country here and the country there. This is going to be a massive debt crisis across the global South, of course also many countries in the global North are feeling fiscal pressures, but it's a different story. So we're looking at a massive, massive debt crisis across the global South with many countries that will be struggling. And with this systemic problem, we also need a systemic solution. So I don't think we can be just looking at a couple of debt for climate swaps here or there. We need to think about some systemic solutions that really help to deliver large-scale debt relief for a large number of countries, while at the same time making sure that the relief is used in a way that will help to address the social problems, the environmental problems and the climate problems. So this is kind of my overview intro and I'm very much looking forward to hear the contributions of the others and of course, and move on to a discussion on how we can move forward with this. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now I am going to present a specific proposal to mitigate climate change and avoid biodiversity loss through of the most important problems that the humankind is facing now coming from a small Amazon country, which is Ecuador. Well, can I go ahead please? Yeah, okay. So let's begin with a brief review of the global significance of the Amazon rainforest. The Amazon does not belong only to Brazil, does not belong only to Amazon countries. It has part of the world heritage and has a lot of functions that allow the planet to provide all the environmental service we need. First, the Amazon is the largest remaining rainforests in the planet. Secondly, is the most important reservoir of biodiversity. It's holding more than three million species which represent about 10% of all the species in the world. At the same time, the rainforest stories about 150 billion tons of carbon so is a key, very, very important part of the contribution to fight climate change. The Amazon basically concentrates one-fifth of all available global fresh water. Finally, the Amazon fulfills a very, very important function regulating the rains and humidity all over South America. So if the rainforest disappears or is seriously treated, all the climate and food production in the region can collapse. Finally, that's very important. There are about 350,000 rainforests about 350 indigenous peoples living in the Amazon. And their survival might be also treated. Next please. However, but the Amazon is very fragile. Here I'm going to present some of the most important problems the Amazon is facing now. Now we have already lost about a fifth, maybe a sixth or a fifth of the original rainforest cover due to mostly to the forestation. The forestation is the result of several problems, largest scale agriculture, cattle racing, mostly in Brazil and Bolivia, all gas and mining, all is important in Ecuador, Peru, mining in Brazil and Peru, gas in Peru, the construction of very large infrastructure projects mostly in Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, new settlements from poor migrants, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, forest fire, which has been extremely serious in the last two years, particularly in Peru, in Brazil and Bolivia and above all climate change. Next please. The problem is that the combined effect of all these threats is creating a situation in which rainforests can collapse. We are about to reach according to recent research a tipping point in which a process, a self-sustained natural process of civilization because of lack of humidity, lack of rain and at the same time, increasing temperature can be unleashed, threatening at least 30 to 60% of the current Amazon rainforest. You can create a very serious problem worldwide affecting both climate change and biodiversity loss. That's what most recent scientific research are telling us. That's why it's extremely important to consolidate a combined action to save the Amazon rainforest. Next please. Here I am going to present a proposal that comes from an academic research group of several institutions. Our objective is to present a proposal both to Ecuador and the international community for a debt for nature swap in Ecuador. I am going to specifically talk about Ecuador. Ecuador is a very small country. It has a small fraction of the Amazon rainforest. Nevertheless, the most important biodiversity hotspots in the region are located in Ecuador. Secondly, the country has been very affected by oil expansion, which has led to deforestation of biodiversity laws as you can see in the map about the Ecuadorian Amazon. The Ecuador however, in spite of having extracting oil for about 50 years, it's facing a very, very deep crisis that began in 2014 when the collapse of oil prices took place. Now COVID is worsening the crisis. So we are elaborating a debt for conservation swap with China that can first stop deforestation, provide the needed economic relief in the short term and foster a transition away from fossil fuels, particularly oil, to a resilient and more equitable development path for the country. Next please. Here, next please. And go next. Well, here we have some statistical information about the huge increase in foreign debt that Ecuador has because the short term most significant way to avoid the crisis in the last year has been increasing foreign debt. Now the situation seems to be almost out of the country. That's why the country is beginning to promote different ways for debt relief, for debt renegotiation. So far, some of these measures have been successful. Nevertheless, they have the risk of deepening all dependence. For example, the government is negotiating now a debt pre-sale of oil which can increase all dependence in the country. The country has a very limited oil reserve remaining. Next please. Here we have the effects. This is a per capita GDP in Ecuador since 1950 to present. You can see the last year since 2014, we are facing a very, very deep crisis. Per capita GDP is going to drop this year by about 9% for the combined effect of the crisis and the COVID problem. So that's why the country needs a ready sign a deep analysis about its current development parts. Next please. This contribution, this proposal for debt for the conservation swap with China will be specific in the following. China has the largest bilateral share of Ecuador debt with a total of about $6 billion. We propose $807 million debt for conservation swap. The idea is that Ecuador will commit itself to an 80% reduction in deforestation in the next 10 years. It will first save about 225 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in the next years and will avoid the deforestation of about 380,000 hectares of rainforests. The main question you can ask is, is this proposal reliable? Is this proposal feasible to be fulfilled? Fortunately in the Amazon, we have a very successful experience during the former Brazilian government and between 2004 and 2012 under the leading of Marina Silva in Brazil. This country has been able to reduce deforestation by about 80%, 95% in this eight year period. So Brazil sets up a very coherent and successful strategy based on satellite monitoring, international cooperation, appropriate legislation and law enforcement and conservation incentives, local conservation incentives to reduce deforestation. So the proposal is feasible. It can be done and it can provide a very important step towards addressing the two most important problems that's humankind and the Amazonization is facing, climate change and deforestation laws. Next please. Here we have an analysis about how many hectares can be saved in the 10 year period in the future. We have two parts, the implementation of the swap business as usual. Next please. So I would like to present the real dilemma that Ecuador is facing. Some Latin American countries might try to dip extractivist, distractivist model as a short-term reply to the crisis. For example, in the case of Ecuador, the idea will be increasing all the extraction to foster all pre-sales, particularly with China, and expanding large-scale maining in the Amazon. Nevertheless, the country has very small reserve support or metal minerals. So, this reply in addition to a very high social and environmental cost might not be feasible. The second option can begin with a debt renegotiation, the promotion of these debt for conservation swaps by imply the, total elimination of current fossil fuel sources. And finally, to foster a strategy of reducing the forestation and keeping fossil fuel reserve unexploited in the future. Particularly in mega diverse reserves such as the Yasuni National Park. Thank you very much for listening. Fantastic. Thank you, Carlos. And I'm so sorry I wasn't there to introduce you. I never had that happen before. My computer crashed in the middle of moderating this panel, but I'm back. What a ambitious and very important proposal. And also, it should be noted your dedication and persistence on this matter and vision. Given the long history of the past, given the long history since the first proposal, the Yasuni ITT proposal, which was likely just ahead of its time. Let's hope the time is now. Next excited today that we have Romina Piccolati, she's a senior policy analyst at IGSD, the president and founder of the Center for Human Rights and the Environment. Previously, Miss Piccolati was Argentina's environment secretary from 2006 to 2008, during which time she implemented successfully a debt for environment swap. Very excited to hear from Romina today. The floor is yours. Romina, I think you're muted. Okay, here we go. Yes. And so I thank you a lot, Estora, for the introduction and moderating this panel and also for Alicia to put this together and honor to be in this panel with such experience panelists. So I would like to talk today about how to synchronize the current debt crisis with the sustainability of the earth. And some of the things have been said already, the important question that I would like as to help answer is what to do on a debt global crisis and a climate emergency and how to finance it. So please, if we can move to the first slide. So the implementation of debt relief packages as said by many will represent the difference between life and death. And this is not only because the current pandemic situation is pushing people to poverty at an amazing rate. I mean, the World Bank stated that 60 million more people are pushed to extreme poverty. And at the same time, even before the pandemic, the global debt, sudden debt, reach a record of 253 trillion last year that represents 322 of global GDP. So as Ulrich was saying, the, I mean, a global debt restructuring will happen in and we need to be ready to ensure that as we enter in that debt restructuring, we are also taking care of climate. The fall rates are rising and yet we know that if we do not take care of the climate emergencies at the same time that we work debt restructuring, all the work that we'll be doing now will be meaningless as nobody will be able to pay any debt if the planet is immersed in a climate chaos. So therefore, climate stability is a precondition to any economic recovery. And this is why governments and multilateral lenders need to provide better tools to navigate a wave of debt restructuring in a way that includes a climate protection. And this is what we're proposing in the last month. I mean, this is why this tool of debt for climate swap is so, so important. Please go to the next slide. So this is the climate emergency. And now we do know we're already we're already on extreme weather mode, weather events mode. The last six months, we have experienced extreme fires, droughts, floods, extreme temperatures in Siberia. The Arctic is melting an unusual rate. And as Tim Lenton has repeatedly told us with his team, tipping points are approaching faster and they're connected. So to protect the Amazon, yes, we need to work on conservation in the Amazon, but we also need to work on keeping the temperature and in a level that will not unbalance the climate system because any conservation, massive conservation as well, again, will mean anything if we are spiraling in a climate and stability. Then the next slide, please. So this slide shows something that happened actually this week in New York. And the metronome that is a classic of New York has been reset to show how much time we have left to remain under 1.5 and to avoid irreversible climate crisis. And this has been based on the latest research of the Berlin Institute. And as you can see, it's going down as we speak, but we have mostly seven years to be able to bend the curve and be on track for climate protection. The next slide, please. So what to do? So we do know it's too risky to bet against the earth. So there's no other way. For me, it's not a dilemma anymore. There is no other ways for market, for economic, for macroeconomics that to bet in favor of the earth. And for that, as I say before, we need to understand that we need to remain on a temperature that physics tell us can stabilize the climate system. And to meet the target goals, we do know that global net carbon dioxide emissions needs to go down to 45% by 2030 and by 100% by 2050. And we also know that without fast mitigation to reduce near-term warming, the global average temperature are likely to increase and exceed 1.5 during 2014. We also know that on contrast, if we do reduce methane, black carbon, HFCs substantially in the next two decades, we can provide 0.6 of avoided warming, save 2.4 million lives per year and at the same time, save money for consumers, so energy efficiency and allow avoid 15 million tons of crop losses in agriculture. This is very important because when we're talking about climate actions and what kind of projects we should finance and high priority should be projects that deliver jobs, that deliver health resilience and at the same time deliver the most temperature abatement in the short term. And obviously protection of sinks and protection of the Amazon is one of these priorities in jobs creation. So we do know what we need to do on the next decades to keep the earth habitable and we also do know that this is a precondition for economics. So the question is how we're going to finance this because according to UNTAD in 2014 already, they were estimated that we have a gap on climate mitigation between 2015 and 2030 of 60 per year. So we do have not only a gap on mitigation action ambition, but we also have a gap on finance. We also know that putting the war on a 1.5 pathway trajectory will create an additional 150 million jobs. And we also know that we can substantially increase the amount of finance available if we core, if we mainstream that for climate swaps in this wave of devastating negotiation. So can we please go to the next slide? So this is a concept of the climate swap but for the people that are not familiar with the concept, basically instead of continuing to make external payments on an outstanding loans in our currency, a debtor country makes payments in local currency to local climate projects on terms agreed upon with creditors. But bearing in mind that we need to use science to have the right priorities on what kind of projects they need to be financed. Next slide, please. So let's move to the way forward principles and implementation. Next slide, please. So as Ulrich was saying, we need a global approach and at the same time where we're entering maybe on bilateral negotiations, we do need some global approach. So we have put together preliminary principles that can govern this kind of debt for climate swap. The first one is that debt for climate swap should not be seen as new conditionality to debt relief but a new form of sovereign debt payment. This is very, very important for the middle-emerging economies, countries. And also because it's completely aligned with the principle of common but differentiated responsibility which has been fought hard by the South. Also principle to avoiding too little too late debt for natural swaps, debt for environment swaps in the past, including the one that we did in Argentina that I implemented in Argentina it was just a small and marginal portion on the whole debt restructuring negotiation. And that will be insufficient and it will be too late to then reverse the course. So we need to ensure that debt for climate swap are not only a mainstream on debt for climate negotiations but also a substantial amount of debt for climate negotiations on the debt restructuring negotiations. Principle three is incorporate a climate risk in debt assessment. This is essential because the countries that have accepted debt relief during the pandemic they were very hard hit by credit agencies that raised sovereign debt. And we do want to break this perverse cycle. I mean, what we do want at the end of the day is that the most that you invest on climate the better your debt qualify and not the other way around. And for that climate risk needs to be incorporated in debt assessment. The principle four is link debt for climate swap with national climate commitments. Many countries are working on the NDCs right now and it's very, very important that they can put a section where fast mitigation strategies enhance ambition condition to debt for climate swap. So if you're going to increase your ambition 20% more you can link that with climate for debt swap in a very concrete way. Principle five is set up transparent governance systems to make decisions and track the money. This was important in Argentina implementation of the debt swaps and attract others to the table. There's a lot of lessons learned there that can be applied. Let's move to the next slide please. Principle six is incorporate metrics to evaluate climate and economic impacts including revenues, jobs creation, CO2 equivalent reductions and temperature abatement. Revenues as you know are very important when you talk to Minister of Finance and to convince them that this is the way to go and there will be demands leading the negotiations on debt restructuring is very important and the projects that we put together include revenues as well alongside to with job creation and temperature abatement. Principle seven is reinvest of the revenue to increase climate ambition and this can be done for example by creating a set technical fund. Well, the revenues that you generate with the implementation of the project they come back and you can reuse them to increase climate ambition. Principle eight is use climate debt swaps to leverage climate finance. This was a good experience as well that we did in Argentina. When you have a debt for environment swap that works you can see others at the table and leverage finance. And so this is an opportunity also to leverage the green environment facility and the green climate funds. Principle nine, link debt for climate swap with pipeline infrastructure project that reduce climate risk. Cremal shops and same consumer money. There again, many countries do have a pipeline already of infrastructure projects and it's very important that the prioritization includes climate. And mainly when you're implementing not only the full climate swap but also the economic stimulus package. Principle 10, focus the role of the state on protecting people and not unveiling now fossil fuel companies and other inefficient companies. And I think that's very, very important. This is a moment to create jobs and we know renewables create more jobs than fossil fuels. And we do know that fossil fuel are stranded assets as the sort I was saying at the beginning. So I will be negligent to invest taxpayer money on these kind of companies. We'll be negligent with the air and it will be a negligent with your own people. The implementation, we do need head of state leadership. This goes back to Ulrich's point about this is a substantial and structural change and not a marginal thing here and they are on depth swaps for climate and for that we do need head of state leadership. So influence the G20, the G24, the major economy forums, the Secretary General Finance for Development we would like to see out of this process a specific mentions on that for climate swaps and a specific commitment, maybe with a specific trust fund dedicated to this. And IMF, World Bank, Club of Paris, they all have their own leadership in their role. Obviously IMF has a key leadership on depth rating and incorporating climate risk in depth assessment and Club of Paris they have a very good experience on depth for environment swap. They should be the one leading on depth for climate swaps mainly on biodiversity and fast mitigation strategies. And we do need, we also need to develop at the same time group prince first movers champions. China could be one with natural space solutions and the Amazon strategy that Carlos presented and again, the Club of Paris can do a lot on biodiversity and fast mitigation strategies which also is Africa and Latin America. And thank you very much. This is our background note. You can access these in our web page and we're open obviously to any questions. Thank you so much, Romina. What a very comprehensive overview and very thought provoking. We have a lot of questions coming in. I'm gonna move quickly though to our next speaker and we're going to take as many questions as we can after our speakers are done. Next we have Eric Lacombe to the executive director of Jubilee USA Network. Eric's testimony to Congress formed the basis of emergency debt legislation and tax and trade policies. He advised the United Nations Assembly process on global bankruptcy. Last year he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on debt relief responses to the global climate crisis. We're very excited to have you with us today. Eric, the floor is yours. Thank you. It's so good to be with all of you today and I appreciate the other presentations. I think some of the other presenters have looked at a number of issues in terms of the global debt crisis as well as the challenges we face in some of the solutions. One of the solutions that has been highlighted are debt swaps. And in my presentation today, what I'd like to do is talk a little bit about where some of the opportunities are for the climate adaptation and mitigation discussion. Right now where decisions are being made that influence this discussion. Both in terms of funding debt swaps but looking also much more broadly at the need for climate adaptation and mitigation policies and where we really need to be advocating for them and our objectives right now. Next slide. So the challenge in front of us as we approach it is looking at the reality that the North owes a debt to the South. What we call what Pope Francis calls what people have been calling for the last 15 years the idea of climate debt. But the reality because of the North taking resources from the South to fuel consumption and the industrialization process, conditions were created for climate change. Thus spurring greater inequality as well as pushing forward more extreme natural disasters. Southern countries have fewer resources to deal with these events as well as the shocks that are caused by climate change like hurricanes, forest fires, viral outbreaks. So we really begin this conversation with the sense that because of this the North owes a debt to the South. Climate adaptation and mitigation we'll call for a very large investment. And according to a good report Nick Stearns from Brookings in 2016 and some other amazing economists and thinkers of all that was needed before the pandemic struck in terms of climate adaptation and mitigation, 70% of those resources need to go to Southern countries. Next slide. And I think in this moment there is an opportunity. I think we've heard how extreme the crisis is on climate issues, which also is impacting labor issues, production issues and the reality that we've seen right now 265 million people move into the ranks of experiencing famine around the world. 80 million of those people in Latin America according to the United Nations. So these issues are incredibly serious. We are in a moment, we believe that similar to after the last financial crisis where there was a period where world leaders were starting to ask big questions and considered more bold proposals. So in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, we see that there is the opportunity for debt and global financial architecture processes to be evaluated, they are being evaluated. There are conversations about creating new resources and those new resources that are going to be created could and should include climate adaptation, mitigation and protection efforts. Next slide. So here are the five areas that I just kind of want to walk through today in terms of where there are discussions, in terms of looking at climate debt relief and financing as a crisis response. Some of it is going to be alluding to some more technical pieces. Some others are more broader pieces. I think all of these offer all of us an important chance for advocacy now and definitely through the next year as many of these decisions will be made in some way. So the five target areas that I'm going to discuss are first, the IMF and World Bank. Second, looking at debt contracts. The reality that private debt is essentially under jurisdictions. The majority is in the state of New York, then the United Kingdom and then Germany, France, Singapore, Japan. But changing those debt contracts, looking at clauses in terms of being able to move forward climate debt relief responses as well as climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. Next, I'm going to look at the United Nations financing for development process. I'm going to look at one particular proposal that's been discussed and lifted by Caribbean countries in response to the climate crisis. I want to note some of the issues and opportunities that are before the G7 and G20 and what's at stake if we don't intervene with the decisions they're making right now on debt. And then finally, I want to really turn to, I think a very serious issue and one that I'm unsure of how much focus is on, but that's looking at the Amazon region government debt levels and also among some of those governments, the stimulus packages that governments have generated which are quite significant. And there needs to be a climate mitigation and adaptation focus that's advocated on the ground in these countries in terms of moving forward some solutions. Next slide, please. So the IMF and World Bank, we very are likely approaching a new wave of global debt restructuring. Climate mitigation and adaptation is really missing from IMF supported debt restructurings and analysis. So right now is we have this wave of debt restructurings that will go forward where processes are being determined now on how those processes are going to work. There isn't a strong lens that looks at how fiscal plans are lined with requirements of mitigation and adaptation or looking at how climate resilience of public investments should be a part of a growth path analysis. If these lenses start to be included, what it means is that a country has the opportunity in a restructuring to capture more debt relief specifically for climate adaptation and mitigation. What is happening at the International Monetary Fund right now is they have had a pilot process which is just for a small handful of countries which is looking at climate change policy assessments. So essentially advising governments on how to start to look at climate change. But it really doesn't represent anything that's binding only for a small subset of countries. I think there's also a reality that as we've seen from the most recent report on the International Monetary Fund, the Global Financial Stability Report, they are wading into the debate of how climate risks impact the Global Financial Regulatory Agenda and System. This is also another really important way to I think intersect to push executive directors and push the IMF because no matter what your position is on IMF involvement, they're going to continue to look at a lens in this report for the upcoming reports as well. And what that lens looks like is something that could help us, something we can cite and being able to influence it, again, actually has an impact on the global climate change agenda within the financial system. A few other issues that I want to note because I think they're important, a big part of the global conversation right now and something that's happening within the G20 that the head of the IMF has called for is a new allocation of special drawing rights. There are also existing special drawing rights. So I want to just note those in kind of two buckets. So right now, processes are moving forward in the IMF of how countries might allocate or distribute $176 billion in resources. So far of that existing allocation, a few billion have gone to concessional lending processes. I think behind the scenes at the IMF, there's a move to try and increase that with existing special drawing rights donations. But the reality is that a realm for existing donations to be donated to a climate debt swap facility, for example. And this was referenced as an idea back in 2010 by the IMF in a staff paper. And right now, I think in the broader debt discussion, we're looking at how you use existing special drawing rights and new allocations of special drawing rights actually to fund a number of initiatives. So it's something that should be on the agenda. Now, the bigger bucket is the special drawing rights new allocation where many world leaders, economists like Joseph Stiglitz have called for a trillion dollar allocation. But we've seen the UN conference on trade and development, other policy groups pushed for up to two trillion. And right now, in terms of a lot of our work we're doing at Jubilee, we're looking at a three trillion dollar allocation in terms of actually meeting the need of the liquidity crisis because that would mean right away a trillion dollars without any extra donation would go to developing countries, both low income and the middle income ones, which are in the Amazon region. With this money, there is no, essentially once it goes to a central bank it could be spent in any way. So this is another place to advocate that money should be going to facilities that help move forward in the Amazon region, climate mitigation, adaptation and protection. So those are some of the pieces in front of the IMF and World Bank that are relevant to intersect in right now. Next slide please. The next piece, and this has to go with something I'll also address a little bit later, but the reality when we talk about different types of debt, different types of actors, we have public debt institutions like development banks, like the International Monetary Fund like governments, and more and more in terms of debt. And this is true for at least four countries we've looked at in the Amazon region. Their biggest concerns are actually with private debt and the private debt crisis, meaning that it's from corporations, from businesses, from commercials. And certainly all of the countries, and we won't be able to go into details, there are different things that are impacting them and the crises aren't exactly the same in the countries we've looked at, but I think it is important to note that the private sector debt is an issue. So 51% of the world's private debt is contracted under US law. About another 45% is under UK law. The rest is between five or six other countries. And so those contracts as we learned from the Argentina crisis, where for years in a court battle in New York state, a contract on their debt was being determined for what a collective action clause meant who would include it in a restructuring. So these contracts are going to continue. There's a big move in the financial system to improve collective action clauses. We're seeing new collective action clauses in recent years that are hurricane clauses first introduced in the Grenada debt restructuring about six years ago that are now not perfect, but being adapted but essentially allows a payment moratorium on debt in order to be able to deal with funding relief efforts to immediately go into place when our hurricane or other natural disaster hits. We also have GDP collective action clauses that we're now actually seeing emerge in the Puerto Rico debt restructuring. But looking at creditors are paid more if an economy is growing and thriving. So linking payments to actually the success of an economy as opposed to just taking from the economy no matter what's happening with that particular economy. And so within this, we believe there are actually rooms for climate mitigation, climate adaptation and burden clauses that can start to be introduced to contracts that would offer relief and financing for mitigation and adaptation when we need it. So a little bit esoteric, but I think really critical when we're looking at four of the countries in the Amazon region, not looking at a public debt crisis or a public and private but solely a private debt crisis. Next slide. Eric, just one moderator moment. I mean, I could listen to you all day. We have, you're a little over 15 minutes and I'd love to hear from Kevin and still have some time for questions. So just a note if you could. I know you still have several more slides, but. Sure, no, thank you very much. So I think the presentation will be shared. The next slide looks like there's a bit of a problem with it, but there's the United Nations financing for development process. Now there's a broad debt agenda that is being moved through that process, all of which could or should have climate adaptation components to them. Right now, many of them don't. I won't get into that broader agenda, but I will talk about a proposal that has been lifted by Caribbean governments and small island development states behind the scenes. And that's to look as the climate is driving more extreme disasters that the South is experiencing. A disaster could trigger essentially a debt relief process and a bankruptcy or debt restructuring process. So this is kind of a looking at a post way of dealing with the challenges. Next slide. So I would also just note that the G7 and G20 are important places where these discussions are moving forward. And many of these decisions over the next year will only really be made at the G20. Given that they control the voting shares at the IMF and given that right now the processes are moving because of lack of global financial architecture in their groups and subgroups. So the G7 Canadian presidency did look at that last proposal and brought it to the G7, but didn't move forward with something quite as robust. I think the other place that I would just note is that it is important for the climate movement for all of us to be a 20 infrastructure agenda because a large part of what could happen with adaptation and mitigation is about making infrastructure sustainable and resilient. There's also the reality that the G20 quality infrastructure investment principle shapes and influences all multilateral development banks. So it's a very important place for us to be bringing this agenda. Next slide. So this just brings us to something that I really thought was important to highlight, especially among partners around this particular conversation. So when we look at the countries that are facing debt crisis or high debt distress, public and or private, we're looking at Venezuela, Ecuador, Suriname, Guiana, Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil. Bolivia, Colombia and Brazil are at risk of private debt crisis, part of what I had raised earlier. So just because of this global pandemic and the extreme economic change that countries are experiencing among these Amazon region countries except for Guiana, their losses or contradictions in GDP range from 26% to 7%. At the same time, we do have countries that are in massive stimulus packages during this time that are being generated now, will be spent once over the next few years and will be gone forever. Some of the examples, just as percentages of GDP to show that this is hundreds of billions of dollars of money is, you know, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, you can see against the broader size of their economy how big their stimulus packages are. So I think the final question that I want to leave us with in this area is with hundreds of billions of stimulus, our recovery packages aligned with regional Amazon protection initiatives and climate objectives, including debt swaps and broader mitigation policies. I think that's a really serious question right now is these governments, again, will spend hundreds of billions of dollars in stimulus. Next slide. So, you know, in closing, I think we've all gone over really how terrible this crisis for all of us, the entire world, the poor, the developing world, as well as for the environment. And so I leave us with a challenge someone who wrestled with that crisis we talked about earlier, Grenada recovering from hurricanes. When he said to the World Bank after the terrible 2017 hurricanes, crisis is a terrible thing to waste. There is a reality that right now we have opportunities amidst this crisis and it's incumbent upon us to be able to not only win the broader relief measures that can address extreme poverty, but also link the lenses and measures we need to move forward our climate agenda. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Eric. And for those who are interested, there is a policy tracker to your last question of it. You know, where is the stimulus money going? Is it addressing these critical issues in the Amazon? A tremendous piece of work that's being done and updated constantly from around the world on where stimulus money is actually going relative to fossil fuels and energy that has been produced by the ISD and many others. I'll put a link to it in the chat. Finally, we have Kevin Gallagher, the director of the Global Development Policy Center at Boston University's Party School of Global Studies. Kevin has a long history in working on these issues at the G20 and Committee on Development Policy and at the United Nations. I thank you so much for joining us, Kevin. The floor is yours. Thanks. It's great to be on this panel and to be part of this important and super salient discussion. Given that we're a little short on time and I really want to make sure we have a discussion, I'll skip the PowerPoint and try to just cut to the chase here. You know, sometimes folks in the environmental community see lots of economic growth and prosperity as sometimes fundamentally at odds with the environment. But one of the things that we're learning now is that downturns and especially crises can be worse. When countries are desperate for the fiscal space like we are right now to attack this virus, to protect the vulnerable and then try to put together a sustainable recovery, countries for good reason are just looking around for any kind of short-term economic activity to be able to meet those goals. And unfortunately, especially in a time when there's lots of external debt, they look for those areas of the economy that can be sold off internationally to be able to pay back those debts and get that fiscal space. So in Ecuador, Peru and other countries in the Amazon, that means pressure on oil concessions, hydropower projects, and other forms of expansion into the Amazon, which is of course the source of livelihoods for people, the main source of biodiversity for local and national ecosystems and the carbon sink for all of us. And so this pressure is what Carlos Laya called deep extractivism is what the first thing that many of these countries in the region have to fall back on because unfortunately for longer term structural reasons, this is all they have to offer the world economy at this point in time. Yesterday I was on a panel with Jeffrey Acomodo, the first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund and former member of the Trump administration's Treasury Department. And he gave us an inkling of what the projections for economic growth will be when they announce them in two weeks for Latin America and the IMF predicts a 9% contraction in economic growth for Latin America in 2020. If you translate that into per capita terms, that brings Latin America back to where they were in 2010. So that's a lost decade, another lost decade. The past three out of the four have been last decades in terms of economic growth for the region. The only period where there was really sustained economic growth that was any bigger than from the period from 1950 to the early 1980s was the early 2000s, which many of us call the China boom, which was good for economic growth in some countries where we're able to use some of that windfall profit to protect the poor. But unfortunately it also accentuated the environment. And many of you on this call will probably see would probably see that as a lost decade as well. On Monday, my center, the Global Development Policy Center is going to release something called the IMF COVID-19 Recovery Index. And we measure all of the 100 programs that have been out so far on the extent to which they encourage health spending to attack the virus, social spending to protect the vulnerable and financing for a green recovery. As Eric said, and I've written about this too, although the IMF does not have enough resources to deal with this crisis, it needs a stepwise increase in resources. We find for now that on two of the three of those things, the IMF is doing a surprisingly good job with the limited amount of resources that it has. First of all, most of the programs, all but 13, do not have any fiscal conditionalities as they have in the past. They're all relatively flexible programs. Unfortunately, one of the most strict programs is Ecuador's, which is of course in the heart of the Amazon. Secondly, almost all the programs are really promoting health spending to attack the virus and social spending to deal with the vulnerable. This stands in stark contrast if you study the past of the International Monetary Fund, which often say cut health spending, cut social spending. Now, the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Gorgieva has been out there almost being one of the world's thought leaders on the need for a green recovery. Unfortunately, we find that the green recovery part of these programs is miniscule at best. We only find a handful of programs where it's really encouraged. We do find in the programs for Bahamas and Bangladesh that the IMF is encouraging and supporting adaptation finance, but by and large, they're indicating that this liquidity should liquidate natural assets across the world. What is worse? One of the other things that the First Deputy Managing Director, Algamotto, said yesterday, he said Latin America should spend as much as they can now with these programs, but he said, and I quote, keep the receipts. What he meant by keeping the receipts is that the need for fiscal consolidation, the IMF's term for austerity, is right around the corner. And so rather than this being a good step in the right direction for the IMF, and then we get them more resources and they continue to practice what they've created in terms of health, social spending in the environment, they are not gonna have as much resources as they need and they're gonna start advising countries and conditioning countries to start that fiscal consolidation period, which will only accentuate this desperation finance and put the region, especially the countries we're concerned about on this webinar, more into a deep extractive mode. And I just have to note, if being an American, that couldn't be more hypocritical, right? Here in the United States and across the advanced economies, we're printing every dollar or euro or yen that we can and we're borrowing lots and lots of debt at percentages of the GDP, way higher than many countries in the South to be able to stimulate our economies, but the IMF is on the verge of going back to where it was and focusing on fiscal consolidation. As we speak, according to Sopal or the Economic Commission on Latin America and Caribbean, countries across the region are ranging from 20 to 70% of all government revenue right now is going to service external debt payments. What is needed now is fiscal space so countries can attack the virus and protect the poor immediately and then start to mount a sustainable and inclusive recovery, not dollars to pay foreign debt now and to sell off the environment later. We need a comprehensive five point plan to really be able to give countries the fiscal space that we need. Number one, to echo what Eric and everyone else in the world except for the United States government is saying we need a massive new allocation of special drawing rights in the world economy. Number two, we need to expand the Debt Suspension Initiative or the DSSI to middle income countries and to climate vulnerable countries. Number three, we need substantial debt relief, not just suspension of payments, but actual haircuts across the world. Developing countries need to be able to focus on the poor and to mount sustainable recoveries. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has a very specific proposal about this for small island developing countries in Latin America that's face climate vulnerabilities, mainly island states in the Caribbean that are suffering from climate shocks. They're calling for a 12.2% reduction in the overall level of debt and the creation of an adaptation fund. We need something like that for the Amazon. Number four, and perhaps this is the most important, we need meaningful participation by the private sector in these efforts, including rules that make sure that credit rating agencies don't downgrade countries for doing the right thing. And fifth, and this is a real important for people on this call, we need civil society and governments and the international community to make sure that we have accounting and monitoring systems to make sure that any sorts of relief, any sorts of new finance goes towards attacking the virus, protecting people and putting forth a green recovery. But unfortunately, we can't wait for all that. Like Eric said, like Uli says, it's really important for all of us to act, think globally, act locally and act globally. We have to be working in these multilateral forums, but developing countries, civil societies have very little voice in them. That doesn't mean we have to stop, we need to create coalitions and think about new ways to be able to do this. But we also need to act locally. And so the kinds of initiatives that we heard from Carlos.aya and from Marina Picolote, these are important things that we need to try to get off the ground at the national level now. And perhaps in Carlos's case, we saw earlier this week some real leadership in the global community on climate change with respect to China. We know that next year they are hosting the convention on biological diversity. What's great about Ecuador is that unfortunately, it is highly debt distressed. It's really having a trouble with the virus. It has a number of poor people. It also has plenty of biodiverse forest that could be protected, which could help those people help stop the virus and help enhance biodiversity and protect the climate all at the same time. So if there's any advice to give to China, if they were gonna do some kind of an instrument and start somewhere, I'd start in Ecuador. So finally on next steps, I urge and plead with everyone to work on the global level in the ways that Eric and Ulrich Vols talked about. It's imperative, especially from a climate change perspective, that we need some sort of systemic changes. So everyone needs to be thinking globally and acting globally. We also have to be thinking locally and acting locally. And that's the second thing we need to do. We need to work at the local level and at the national level to make sure governments can get whatever fiscal space they can to be able to protect the poor, attack the virus and mount a green recovery. And we need to hold them accountable for that. And some of these debt for nature swap instruments can be part of that kind of a package. Thanks so much. Thank you so much, Kevin. So much in such a short and condensed period of time. You know, this panel could be and probably should be a day long or several day long conference. There are so many important concepts here for moving forward. I'm going to propose that a number of the questions that we've seen in the chat, our team, will work with the panelists to develop more comprehensive answers after the webinar. And when we send out the link to everyone who's registered in the webinar, we can also send out some more comprehensive answers. A number of amazing questions and important conversation in the chat. We have, unfortunately, six minutes left. What I'm going to do is I'm going to flag a couple of them and then do a quick go around. A couple of minutes for each of our panelists to address what they'd like to address before we leave. So to Kevin, the last question that came in most recently is specifically on demand-driven peak, peak oil, many people are talking about including BP this year as a result in part of COVID. But the question specifically is around, besides debt swaps and considering that most industry funding comes from global financial centers, would you see banning capital inflows preventing the oil industry from funding for funding an alternative? There are a number of questions I want to flag for Carlos and Romina about Ecuador. How can this debt-for-nature plan go along with the work to diversify the economy of Ecuador to move away from dependence on extraction and exploitation? I think that's exploitation. And just a reminder to people that amazing work is going on with Indigenous nations, visions, and in collaboration with a number of Indigenous nations through the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Initiative. And I urge you to take a look at that. A question of whether or not we're seeing this proposal or this idea be discussed with the Ecuador intelligentsia. Are there relationships with them? Are they actually looking at anything like this? Just checking if there is anything big that I missed in those questions. Well, that's a lot. And I'm sure people will debt swap specific. We had some great questions around, how can we make this interesting for creditors? And then, of course, to Carlos, Kevin, and others, a number of questions about China. Will China, how can we help ensure that China becomes a champion on these nature-based solutions? I've heard a lot of people talking about the fact that it seems like the right hand's not talking to the left hand. China has done some incredible climate commitments here at Climate Week. And of course, we've heard many visions from China about the ecological civilization. Is this actually going to be possible that China will lead? So big, big questions. Sadly, not a lot of time. Going to do a final go-around if you can stick with us to the end of our go-around. I hope you can. Really excited to see so many participants have stuck with us for the full hour and a half. Thank you so much. So I'm just going to go across my screen here and ask Romina if you'd like to give us some final comments. Well, we have thank you for all the questions. And I mean, I think there were a lot of questions about China. And one thing that is happening is the China dialogue, high-level dialogue at this moment. So I would be very important to influence that as basically that dialogue with main creditors. I think China can lead the way on that base solution, but also we'll need the debtor countries to request this. So to work with the countries that are part of the Amazon Basin, to work with countries in Africa, I think is crucial. And promote this dialogue from the debtor side as well. So it's not only a credit-driven dialogue. So that would be my two cents. And this is a very important opportunity for the war. And I don't think we're going to have another opportunity like this one. And I know the pandemic has caused a lot of suffering and it still is causing a lot of suffering. So it's a time of deep reflection on how to avoid more suffering of the world and finally have a more balanced global society. And this is the moment. I don't think we're going to experience another moment like that in our generation. Thank you very much, Romina. Eric, can I turn to you? Sure. When someone else says what you would say, as the Quakers do in the United States, they simply say, friend speaks my mind. So let me just offer that and then just offer the additional thought that this really is a moment. If we really work and focus where we can impact global policies on the climate inequality and extreme poverty, the urgency and the opportunity, I believe are unique in the lifetimes of many of us. And the reality is the window is going to be short. Maybe it'll be a year to three years. But the further we get away from the crisis, like the last financial crisis, I believe, world leaders will go back to status quo and business as usual. Carlos, I should have also mentioned that there were a number of questions about how people can support indigenous visions and how could indigenous peoples benefit directly from some of these arrangements. I don't know if you caught those in the Q&A or in the chat. But I turn to you now for final comments. Carlos, you are muted. Thank you. Well, first of all, I think this idea of debt for nature swap can be an initial spark, a kind of sparking point to develop a more comprehensive shift, including as an essential component, the respect and expansion of indigenous perspective of development. The sumikaosai, the idea is to change the perspective. And foster are a more sustainable and equitable model of development in Ecuador. In Ecuador, we have been working for a while on expanding the economy, basically, mostly on activities such as agroforestry, agroecology, sustainable nature basis, tourism, and so on, then provide incentives to reaching, at the same time, our respect for nature, the conservation of indigenous cultures, and finally, an improving living conditions. I think the way is feasible, but it means changing a kind of new paradigm to do so. Thank you. Thank you, Carlos. And for those who weren't monitoring the chat, I'll just say it out loud. We'll hear from Carlos again tomorrow in a webinar on the need for international cooperation to align fossil fuel production with a 1.5 degree world. You can find that on the Climate Week program website as well. Kevin, I don't know if you will. The floor is open to what you want to say in conclusion, but there have been so many conversations and questions about the how and also about China and next steps. I'm wondering if you could leave us with your final thoughts. Sure. Let me leave on China and just quickly answer the question that you asked me about in terms of should countries be regulating foreign investment. And the question to that is absolutely yes. That crisis is a function largely of very volatile short-term debt flows that went into the private bond markets across the region, largely because of monetary policy in the United States and the lack of discretion on the part of Latin American governments. So Latin American governments, as Eric says, we need quality and sustainable and resilient infrastructure across the world to make it resilient and more inclusive built for the 21st century. And countries can't mobilize all that finance themselves. So foreigners, if they want to finance it, that's great. Countries need to get more discretionary about attracting good foreign investment and mitigating and keeping out some of the negative investment. And that really means being really careful about the short-term, highly volatile stuff and over time to shift away from fossil fuels. But we can't be naive about this particular region where because of structural reasons, some of it going back to colonialism, there isn't another alternative for some of this foreign exchange. So we also have to be really focused on just transitions in these countries that we don't leave the people who are in and around some of these fossil fuel-intensive sectors behind. So definitely yes, there needs to be regulation. There needs to be international alignment along this too. I know Brooke Gouverne is one of the people on this call in many of the trade and investment treaties that the United States has with Ecuador, with Peru, make it difficult to make that kind of discretion. We need to reform those as well. Now on China, to make a plug, I sit on the international team leader of a joint commission with the Ministry of Environment in China for the Green BRI. And last week, we put out our special policy study on greening the BRI with respect to SDG-15. And in that study, if we have any time, I'll put it in the chat. Maybe Maureen, if you're there, you can put that on the chat. We have a whole section in there about different nature swaps. And China has an incredible domestic experience with dealing with nature in the same way it is starting to on climate change with its pioneering ecological redlining approach. But, and Romina mentioned this, and China is very explicit about this. One of the great things about China's foreign policy, which is very different than some of these international institutions, is that it doesn't put conditionalities on domestic policies. And so that you cannot rely on China to condition their finance on some of these kinds of things. However, if a host country asks and demands and puts it on the table, they're willing to negotiate. And that's important, right? Even though Ecuador has lots of hydropower and oil concessions in Romina's country, their country asked for one of the largest solar power plants in the region, and that's what they got. So China's not monolithic about this stuff. They're not gonna condition environmental policy on foreign investment. They've learned those lessons. They don't do that across the board, but let's hope that policy makers in Ecuador listen to folks like Carlos Lareda, and if Ecuador puts it on the table with China, let's hope they can also lead by example and be one of those first movers that Romina is talking about. Thank you. Fantastic, thank you. And Ulrich, you started us off. You get the last word from the panel. You set the stage for the importance of the global importance on climate change and why this is critical to address. I know we're all feeling the urgency right now, especially given the spends that, as Romina noted, will be unprecedented in all of our lifetimes that will affect where the future goes. So no pressure, but we're leaving you with the last word. Yeah, the floor. Yeah, well, thanks so much. It's been a fascinating discussion and I really wish we had more time. We have another time. Well, let me reiterate, this is absolutely a systemic crisis, so we do need systemic solutions. We can't deal with piecemeal solutions. I can also reiterate what everyone's been saying about the great urgency and the historic experience with dealing with debt crisis is waiting for debt crisis to resolve themselves never worked out. So we really need to tackle the debt crisis now and given the great urgency in dealing with the global climate crisis and the pandemic and the biodiversity crisis, the urgency is even greater. And so we have here a really truly global challenge. None of these crisis can be dealt by any individual country alone. And so we really need world leaders to step up. We need the IMF and World Bank membership and in particular the powerful G20 countries to really get going now because we don't have another half year or a year to waste. This really has to happen very soon. So we need to emphasize this urgency time and again. And of course, nothing will work without involving the private sector. And this is also one reason why we need to have an agreement among the leading countries to really put pressure on the private sector because otherwise it's not going to happen. Not sure if that was kind of the grand closing statement but some points from me, thank you. Thank you so much Ulrich. And I've, thank you to the person who gave us the proper report. I've just sent it to all attendees in the chat. There is the report that Kevin mentioned earlier. So this is, I think we all can see a very critical conversation, a very timely conversation. Our organizations will be working to figure out how we can bring this conversation forward and continue to enrich it in the depth of it. You know, this is the longest run up that any of us have ever had to a cop. So we still have another 14 months to continue to work together, to try and develop this work. I want to mention again that there are a number of us exploring a related proposal which will be talked about tomorrow on another webinar. I think it was quite astounding to many of us to realize that the UNFCCC and the Paris Accord has very few mechanisms to constrain the production of oil, gas and coal. So a number of academics and policymakers and advocates from around the world have come together to discuss whether we need a new parallel initiative because what we know is fossil fuels are 80% of the climate problem yet from the production gap report that I mentioned at the beginning we're on track to build 120% more than the world can safely burn. The intellectual capital, the political capital, the financial capital going up into continuing to expand oil, gas and coal when we know we have enough currently under production and construction on the planet while we wind down is astounding. So I urge you to take a look at fossilfueltreaty.org, the International Fossil Fuel Non-Plariferation Treaty Initiative. The fact is we heard today that the world needs China, the IMF and other major creditors to commit to implementing debt relief strategies for the future of our planet. The challenges before us are immense but there's still time to turn these crises into opportunity. Thank you. I think it was Romina for noting that it's seven years and that clock is counting down and to reorient a major driver behind the problems we face. So thank you all for taking the time to learn about these critical issues to our experts for joining us today to give us a little window into your research. We deeply appreciate you all. I hope you all enjoy the rest of climate week thanks to Climate Group for convening all these very important conversations and to all of us who joined us and to all of you who joined us and stayed on for over an hour and a half. Thank you so much for your time. We will send out some more answers and the recording from these questions and to everyone. Stay safe. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Take care. Thanks so much, Sepura and thanks everyone. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Take care.