 Thank you, thank you for the organizing or inviting me today to be honest. It is a great privilege being here. And I know you've been the whole week discussing on advances on research for development within CGIR and FDA and I've been trying to pop in and get a little bit the picture of what was going on over the week. And, well, yeah, you have your internal conference with perhaps a more of a top down approach and I'm going to start. I think I'm going to start to bring you some thoughts from the other end. Specifically for this talk, I would like to highlight somehow the problem and the challenge of research for development from another point of view from the from the view of a local researcher working for preservation of tropical forest but that often perceives research being done without researchers from the from the local or from the regions or from certain countries or from people that are underground. And perhaps I'll give you some thoughts that hopefully will be useful to bring some insights. Yeah, let's have a reflection on these and discuss participation perhaps versus representation and I'm mostly going to share some personal experience that I've been facing challenging the stereotypes of any kind, working for research, being a scientist in the topics and what has meant this to me in order to do some research and hopefully some ideas to move forward. Let me see if this works well. Yeah, to begin with, I really, I mean, it might sound basic, but just to remember that inequality is designed is really not an accident. In this society, we are all structured in a series of power relationships and we are aware of that or maybe some aren't aware of it. And it has multiple axis. And the fact that this power relations exist creating equality. I mean this is just a fact and it's something that we have to live with. There are high places according to you know, social class, race, gender, abilities. And it is a reflection of a system that has been in place and multiple causes manner, we have to face to manage several problems. And you might be wondering why the hell am I talking about this if it's an introduce me as a researcher in ecology. I think this is the first time that I really bring up this kind of topics from my experience again I don't do a study genders I don't study inequality. I don't usually address but I've been facing it since I work in the topic so I just bringing some of these and some of the learning lessons that I've been facing or learning in the process. So, again, I mean I could talk today and I'm very, very, very pleased to talk to you about all the work we've done all the research we've done from the country from the ground, understanding the importance of transportation and use and cover change, what is happening to our forest, why to preserve what are the impacts what are you know patterns rates drivers, how to monitor the monitoring efforts we do from the from the ground. We have proposed management strategies we have even published about the decision support systems. And also we have a like many of the things that I have been discussed over the week with don't be we've been doing some attempts to influence policy. I mean, whilst that I mean I could also talk a lot about fire in the tropics and a big debate that still is unsolved or or generates a lot of confusion confusion about whether fire in it's a natural disturbance or whether it's a catastrophe or whether it's a line line tool management that has been traditionally used or whether it's a bit of everything and we've been doing research on that for for many years from from Columbia, I'm missing Columbia, but also the northwestern part of the Amazon. And also if we go to the map Amazon that it's perhaps one of the areas of the world that it goes more into the news and recently again with the rise of forest fires that are occurring and we could talk about, you know, all the complexity the drivers and all the situation that makes so difficult to to advance and solve a problem that we keep seeing it and how greed is destroying the forests of the Amazonia and again we've done a lot of research in the northwestern part of the Amazon but now whilst doing all these and ecology and like I said in fire ecology and physical geography modeling we've come across without or we came across certain inequities and I want to focus perhaps on two today or perhaps three and just bring some some insights into that. On the left slide it's just a picture of some illicit crops in the Amazon and and there's a discussion we brought at some point a few years ago, whether or about the impact of development projects on policies and this is this this paper that I recommend you if you're interested in in it is really challenging for some people that see development projects in a in a different perspective but it challenges a bit the fact that illicit crops coca cultivation in northwestern part of the Amazon and in the Indian Amazon area share a common region in projects that were funded by international cooperation and there's a big discussion on that there's a discussion whether really the region is in the 60s and 70s and whether illicit crops was a result of displacing farmers and whether it's localized and linked to those intended promotions of migration to the forest frontier for development projects that unintentionally stranded hundreds of colonists in the Amazon and then all the crisis in Latin American countries made a little bit the countries to experience some debt crisis and withdrawing the support of people that were forced to go to that area and then then later turn to coca anyway this is just an idea of what I want to bring you some discussions that there are several ways of seeing these problems and on the other graph. This is a very strong inequity issue that we have in certain countries which is the land distribution and it shows basically that this is the case for Colombia and we could repeat it in many parts of the world how the proportion of productive farms and land is distributed per property and per percentage of landholders at 1% holds 81% of the properties in Colombia, half of the country is in 1% of the small holder. So this is a big, big inequity and inequity that needs to be solved that roots the forestation problems in several of the countries, I mean I'm talking again about South America but I'm sure that we'll see similar pattern somewhere else and it has to do a lot with institution and societal issues and problems that no matter where you are doing research you have to take into account or you're facing all the time and you cannot ignore and act on it. So anyway, this is just some background also to talk about two, perhaps two of the things that I'm going to focus more and one is the visibility problem of science from the global south. And I'm saying it like this because it does covers many aspects. In theory science has you know no limit, no gender, no body, no origin, it doesn't matter where you are, that's a theoretical part but the fact is that from my experience again I'm talking from my experience as a women's scientist doing science from a global south country. When it's perceived from a privileged position you don't see what is seen from the ground in terms of that kind of visibility and it has to do with hierarchies at different levels also has to do with what Asha Davos published it's related to more on conservation projects than science in general, but it was a very interesting recent article for discussion about the problem of colonial science and it was really interesting to see that in many places of the world, researchers are feeling the same kind of parachuting science, colonial science, people coming to get some information out of you or just coming for a few days and going away and that has a big implication on how we do what we do and what motivates people to do and how certain imbalances can be frustrating and at the same time can be a challenge for many people. Anyways, the problem of colonial science is something that needs to be considered because we face many of that attitude often and it's really a role that is expected from scientists in the global south that we more and more are less willing to do or to accept and talking about other biases where you base it does matter and I remember on the first opening plenary there was a talk about science credibility and it really really I thought oh yeah that's true I mean it's not only that you have the English as a problem which I mean that's it makes you having to work twice to publish things in science, this is an example of ecological related papers, you could see the number of submitted and accepted papers, you can see them balanced there but also it's the credibility, I mean if you are submitting, when you're submitting research done from a local institution they question you much more than if you were signing from one of those big blue balloons on the map so it's really one thing that we have to take into account and that I mean competition in science is the base of inequality because you're already starting with some different opportunities and different conditions but even you know that local sometimes are not really considered or are just a you know a quota on a publication or sometimes just to yeah anyway the pipeline the visibility is also has to do with problems with women and science women again whoever says that your gender or your body has an influence the way you are in science I think he hasn't had to face things that most women scientists have to face anyway there's a pipeline and we have this bias and there's a visibility problem I want to bring this example this is a paper that was published by three women and it has models and it has peace and it was really really hard to publish it because the reviewers were not believing in the science that was behind that they couldn't believe that this thing was happening in Colombia that's why I'm mixing the origin and the gender and because in other countries when this could was not happening so it was really hard to believe and and these biases and I'm just going to move a little bit faster these biases are and the power inequalities are not only from the global to the to the local and nationally we also have some kind of similar issues I mean this is just some examples of publishing things very important and very related to to to Colombian science and being questioned by local authorities and yeah stakeholders that are in power in place within institutions politically influenced very strongly within the country so it's not a matter only of global but it's something that we need to recognize and this is an example also of that it doesn't matter where you are you can influence and do changes this is a one of the bills that it's currently being discussed in in the Congress about how to integrate fire management in the country and it was from the bottom up it was really done by communities it was as approaching to the Senate and doing research but was doing that in the public hearing then you get this big NGO international NGO saying why didn't you call us what they were telling the Congress why didn't you call us if we are the experts and the Congress said look this is this is a citizen initiative managing a bill you could have done it I mean we don't have to go to you to call you to to give us your expertise and well first of all the we need to acknowledge that it's a privilege to work in another country that is not our own country we would like to one more minute yeah I'm sorry I wanted to bring up some of the inequities in conditions to do research but I don't think I'm going to have enough time but also I want to just bring some points about going beyond make up and it's not about I mean we have done and we have seen a lot of advancing bringing down some inequities but it's not a matter of image it's not to have a quarter on your publication is not to just do some images is much more than that and just to bring some points which I'm going to pass quickly I think we have to break that paradigm about knowledge deficit and capacity in the capacity the development needs in the global south and I don't I think we have to change a little bit more that there's a lot of capacity in this country some needs to be incorporated we need to recognize the exclusion and really break those power asymmetries which I think there are many and again like I said they are at multiple scales but it has to be addressed upfront from the beginning even when you start designing something we're not talking about networks and centrality centralization of networks but this is something that we also have to do it suggests that the funding funding and governance of regiments from the beginning need to have participation of all stakeholders, we have to incorporate much better the different perspectives background and skills from local researchers we're not doing it, and we're thinking participation vessels representation, because we need to make more even more local relevant solutions to bigger problems and trust in local solutions. So just, I do really believe that some systems need to be structurally change, and yeah, I would like to share my many more experiences with you but then again I'll just leave these few ideas for you to think about. Thank you.