 Good morning and welcome to this session on Building a Sustainable Ocean Recovery. My name is Jim Leep. I'm the co-director of the Center for Ocean Solutions at Stanford University. I want to welcome you to this session convened by the Friends of Ocean Action as part of the World Economic Forum's fourth Sustainable Development Impact Summit this year online, virtually for the first time. Friends of Ocean Action was launched two and a half years ago in the wake of the first UN Ocean Conference. And in those two and a half years it has become a unique platform in the ocean community. It is a connector bringing existing initiatives together in common cause. It is also a catalyst of new collaborations. Over these couple of years, the Friends of Ocean Action has brought industry and governments together to tackle the challenge of ocean plastic. It has helped spur commitments to crack the challenge of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from shipping. It is mobilizing heads of state, leading companies, technologists, and NGOs to close the Pacific to illegal fishing. 2020 this year was of course supposed to be the super year for the ocean. We were supposed to be gathering together in person in a string of international convenings in the UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, in the our ocean conference in Coror, Palau, the CBD cop in Dalian, in the climate cop in Glasgow. That promised to be a year that could really make a difference. And the COVID pandemic has disrupted that schedule, but it has brought home also the urgency of finding a way to make a difference. So even meeting this way, we have to be sure that this year and the year that follows are indeed super. And we are using this time to rise to the challenge of putting the world on a path to resilience both in the ocean and in society. And that's the mission of this session is to come together and promote develop actionable solutions for a healthy ocean that must be an integral part in the global response and recovery from the COVID pandemic. To take us into that, we have some extraordinary speakers for this opening plenary session, and then we will then go into breakouts. The plenary is live streamed. We will start with keynote speakers and then go to a panel discussion. We'll have some discussion around among the members of the panel on that if time allows questions from the audience. So please put your questions into the chat box. We will then go into breakouts. You will be automatically assigned, which is why there will be a number next to your name. It tells you which group you will be directed into. Those three breakouts will look at sustainable ocean production to nourish billions, capital to finance a sustainable ocean economy, and ocean and community resilience. We start appropriately with Peter Thompson. As president of UN General Assembly, Peter led the convening of the first ever UN Ocean Conference in 2017 that has propelled our progress. And he is now the Secretary General Special Envoy for the Ocean and the Chair of the Friends of Ocean Action. Peter, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Jim. And Prime Minister, very good to see you. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen. All courtesies observed and greetings to everyone gathered here with us in cyberspace. And whatever your circumstances in these trying times, I hope that you and your families are safe and well. In spite of my crocky voice, my wife has just put her head through the door to say that our covered tests have just come through and we're negative. So this family is okay. I want to thank the Friends of Ocean Action for organizing today's high-level gathering and congratulations to the friends for all that they've achieved on SDG 14's behalf to date. And we look forward to the Friends of Ocean Action attaining even higher levels of momentum and success in the coming years. Why are the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Climate Agreement so important to us all? Basically, taken together, they represent humanity's best effort at creating a plan for a secure future for the human species. The plan was universally agreed to by the member states of the United Nations in 2015. Even though we are currently failing in implementing it at the pace required, it remains our best plan. And it is our generational responsibility to see it faithfully through. You've heard me often enough say that at the Climate Change Cup in Madrid last December, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, stated that we are knowingly destroying the life support systems of our planet. I ask you to ponder the implications of that statement and the fact that his words were based on the best scientific information that we have on the subject, namely the reports to the IPCC and EBS. The current rate of global biodiversity loss is estimated to be between 100 to 1,000 times higher than the naturally occurring background extinction rate. And this is scientifically forecast to be the continuing direction in coming years if we don't change our ways. So that is why all of us have this existential responsibility to stay true to the plan, to work for sustainability and resilience, and to change our patterns of consumption, production and habitat destruction so that biodiversity will be protected, so that the ocean's health is restored and we avoid the worst of the looming climate crisis. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to say some words about the Blue-Green Recovery Road that we must surely take out of the pandemic that we're currently living through. And I want to make the point that the Sustainable Blue Economy is one of the most reliable stepping stones along the road opening up ahead. By way of example, I commend to you one of the recent reports issued by the high-level panel for Sustainable Ocean Economy, entitled A Sustainable Ocean Economy for 2050 Approximating its Benefits and Costs. The report provides very positive findings, including the fact that after expert economic analysis, sustainable ocean-based investments yield returns at least five times greater than their costs. I ask you to consider those findings within the context of our times. The trillions of dollars now being earmarked for recovery and stimulus packages can be a crucial lever for shifting from past models of pollution and overexploitation of finite planetary resources to a sustainable route, delivering on our agreed plan and bringing us to a carbon neutral world that we need and so desire. In support of this new route, the high-level panel's report proposes five priority opportunities for immediate investment of stimulus funds to support a sustainable and equitable blue recovery from the COVID pandemic. And I commend them to your thoughts and discussions today. Here are the five. Invest in coastal and marine ecosystem restoration and protection. Invest in sewage and wastewater infrastructure for coastal communities, it's a favor of mine. Thirdly, invest in sustainable community-led, non-fed marine agriculture, for example, shellfish and seaweed. Fourthly, incentivize zero-emission marine transport. And fifthly, incentivize sustainable ocean-based renewable energy. Now ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to just close my remarks now with some quick words about the UN Ocean Conference. As you know, the UN has mandated the holding of the next UN Ocean Conference to be held in Lisbon and to be co-hosted by the governments of Kenya and Portugal. Because of the pandemic, the holding of the conference has been postponed until 2021, with confirmed dates to be announced once the course of the pandemic is clearer. In the meantime, step-by-step preparations for the conference, and in fact, I've just come off a call for it with the Portuguese government, are proceeding. And I'm confident that like the first UN Ocean Conference in 2017, the Lisbon one will be another global game changer in favor of SDG-14's successful attainment. So I look forward to seeing you all, virtually or in person, in Lisbon next year. Now ladies and gentlemen, it's my great pleasure and privilege to introduce the Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, the Honorable Alan Michael Shastane. The Prime Minister currently serves as Saint Lucia's Minister for Finance, Economic Growth, Job Creation, External Affairs, and the Public Service. He's a busy man. He holds a master's degree in Development Banking, respectively from Bishops University in Quebec and the American University in Washington, DC. And for the purposes of our gathering today, I'd like to emphasize that Prime Minister Shastane has had extensive experience in the tourism field. Having in the past served as Saint Lucia's Director of Tourism, as Managing Director of Cocoa Resorts, and as a former President of the Saint Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association. Prime Minister Shastane, you have the floor, sir. Thank you very much, Peter. First of all, I know that you were attempting to make me feel very welcome with the picture you have behind you, a beautiful shot it looks like of one of our petons in Saint Lucia. So thank you very much for that. I want to say that there's some really good news on the front here in the OECS and in CARICOM. So CARICOM now has finalized an exercise last year in which we now have appropriately demarcated all of our blue economy space. So, in fact, the boundaries between all of us now have been settled. And that's a very important first step because that now gives us the legal ability to start now looking to commercialize our space. Sadly, for a region of the world where the amount of blue economy that we have in terms of land space is substantially larger than what we have in physical space, we still don't look enough to try to manage and to develop the blue economy to the extent that we have. Here in Saint Lucia we've seen two initiatives, one clearly a young gentleman who has gotten a tremendous amount of accolades for converting sagacem into a fertilizer and sagacem continues to play havoc with our beaches and our primary economy tourism. And secondly that we've seen a new industry called CMOS to Peter's point where this is a renewable product in the ocean that is doing extremely well. I think that we've seen almost a thousand percent increase in sales of CMOS. And I think that we're only at the tip of the potential of what that product offers. But before we can even get to the blue ocean there are some other issues that are ailing the small island developing states. And Peter very familiar with them from where he came from before. And the problem is that we've now had three major shocks, the financial crisis, climate change in terms of hurricanes and now the pandemic. And the combination of these things have literally depleted the financial resources of our countries. Saint Lucia's debt to GDP in four years I was able to bring it down to 59%. So 1% below the prudential level set by the IMF. In a matter of six months that's gone from 60% to 85%. And depending on what the growth rate is actually going to be this year because we're projecting a 26% decline in our GDP. And if it's worse than that it means that the debt to GDP is going to go up even higher. And certainly right now no one knows with any level of certainty what's going to happen next year. Most of us would have hoped by this point that we would have seen a more convincing return to our economies and that we could say with some kind of confidence that the global economy would be recovering significantly and we would only see a marginal decline from the previous year. And certainly would be maybe two to three years away from getting back to our pre-COVID size economies. Today I don't think any of us can say that with any level of certainty. And the implications of that is that we saw a 50% decline in our tax revenues. Tax revenues which I call free capital. I don't have to go and borrow that. That's money that the government has earned through taxation. 50%, $600 million. We had to go out and borrow to make that up. And while the borrowing has been an extremely concessional race through the IMF and the World Bank and through CDB and our own central bank, we're talking about five to 10-year moratoriums, half a percent to a maximum of one and a half percent interest over 20 to 40 years. Very concessional. So I don't think the country is going to have any difficulty in paying for the debt. But the problem is is that the more debt we take on, given the fiscal rules that we have of measuring the wealth of my country by per capita debt to GDP, sorry, and per capita income, we're in problems. And I say this and I bring this up at this particular juncture because there's no conversation that we can currently have that can take place until we resolve this issue because the states are not going to have the resources to invest themselves to take advantage of the blue economy. Putting pressure on small island developing states to become totally carbon neutral when we know that we're not the ones that are making and inflicting the pain on globally is a heavy burden. So I can say to you as a prime minister, looking at LNG gas as an example is a significant reduction in carbon emissions, but can produce energy at a much cheaper cost than right now that what any form of green energy can. And LNG comes with the ability of getting persons to make the investment without me having to make the investment. The same can't be said of green energy. So we have to resolve this problem that's not going away. We said it during climate change after 2017 when we had Hurricanes, Irma and Maria, that there is a requirement for us to invest in resilience. And investing in resilience means my debt to GDP goes up. The return on that investment is simply building resilience. It's not building capacity, building a bridge higher. It carries the same number of cars. Now the matters become even worse because we've had to immediately borrow money with whatever fiscal space that we had created. It's now gone. So we need help if we're going to create an institution within the Caribbean that can help us now examine the opportunities with the blue economy. I agree with Peter that this is only going to be successful if the citizens of our countries benefit from this opportunity. So it means that we have to create an incubator. We have to create an equity fund to invest in these areas. Otherwise what we're doing here today is just talk because the reality is, is that the expectations of what we can do to meet this new opportunity are limited now and are becoming even less to us moving down the road. So we have said four things. OECD needs to move immediately to using a vulnerability index to measure small island developing states access to concessional funding. Cannot use per capita GDP as that criteria. The evidence of the financial crisis, the evidence of climate change, and now the evidence of the pandemic show that per capita GDP is a meaningless number because in absolute terms it's a limited number because of our populations. The second thing that we've continued to ask for is a change in the governance structures of the IFIs. I mean the British government gave solution to Caribbean when Cameron was Prime Minister $300 million. Seven years later we might be able to see the expenditure starting maybe in January. That's absurd free money and that's the governance structure and even now with the pandemic when we said okay let's repurpose some of our loans in anticipation of a very heavy hurricane season which has manifested. Here we are in October more than halfway through the hurricane season and we've not been able to repurpose those loans to do what? To fix up shelters because now we can put less people in the existing shelters because of COVID and to use some of the money for desilting. October. Now if everyone sitting at the table can't use common sense to some extent and bypass some of these governance structures to actually solve a problem and if that's going to be the continual behavior that we're going to have we're not going anywhere. The third thing that we've said is a dedicated fund for the SIDS. You have the Green Climate Fund it's now in its second tranche the first time nothing for the SIDS. Every time we have to go and apply it's a new a new level that you have to use to become an agent you have to become a promoter you have to become this in order to be able to get the monies. We're spending more time trying to get the administrative hurdles than actually getting the funds to be able to achieve something. And the fourth thing that we clearly said even before the pandemic is how we're going to deal with the debt. In our opinion the debt that you're accumulating for resilience either has to be amortized over a longer period of time and only proportionately brought on to your books or it needs to be a below the balance sheet item. So it's not a matter of us not paying for it but it's simply the ability of us absorbing that kind of money and even now with the pandemic imagine having to absorb 600 million dollars from in three months. It's crazy even though the funds are on a concessional basis so I just want to say gentlemen and ladies that from a small island developing state I see a tremendous opportunity in the blue economy not only in terms of some of the things that David has spoken about but Peter's spoken about but also the things that we've spoken about. We have the cruise ship economy if in fact the Caribbean treated our space as a singular space and we created a system in which we could license people coming into our area. Prime Minister if I may as an old friend I support everything that you have just said there. In a world where the international energy agency has said we can produce 18 times global demand for electricity through offshore wind and you know that's the Caribbean right there and having got your electricity that we can for every boat that runs into or out of a Caribbean island it should be running on electricity the way the huge ferries of the Baltica. So you know the solutions are there but you put your finger on it with the finance side and that's one of the main areas of discussion this this evening or this morning I guess in America and with those words first I want to thank you so much you're such a great advocate for SIDS but you're such also a great advocate for logic as to how we're going to make these solutions actually happen and with those words I'll hand back to our moderator Jim Leep but I really look forward to discussions coming up in the panels. Thank you so much for your words Prime Minister. Thank you Peter. Thank you Peter and thank you Prime Minister we couldn't have asked for a better this first opening remarks to tee up the discussion that follows I am bringing home vividly just the practical realities of how these several crises are affecting a country like St. Lucia and the connected importance of both the innovations and technology and society and governance and at the same time innovations and finance to make those reforms possible so we really appreciate you being here with us and setting us on on the path for this conversation and we now have a great panel to take us into those into those issues. We have three panelists who we will hear from here in Plenary and then as I mentioned we will go into breakouts at the top of the hour. The first is M. Sanjian who's the Chief Executive Officer of Conservation International as you might guess from his background one of the world's leading international conservation organizations. The second is Barkha Masai who is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper which is a fancy way of saying that she is a serious leader in her own country of Port Louis of Mauritius and based in Port Louis and well beyond and the third is John Quill Hackenburg who is the Head of Sustainable Business from Infosys the legendary IT company. So let's plunge into a first set of observations from the panel and then we'll get into a bit of discussion from there. I'm Sanjian I'm going to start with you. So I mean we've heard from the speakers about the central importance of the oceans to post COVID recovery. Can you begin to set out for us the sort of core what you see as the core elements of that recovery agenda? Well thank you I'm great to be here and I'm blown away by the words that we just heard from the Prime Minister I mean I could have I honestly could listen to him for a long time he had such clarity of thought and purpose and all of the stuff that we discuss in kind of these forums somewhat esoteric somewhat removed from the real challenges that people are facing on the ground was really brought to bear through through his words and you just clearly see the passion and the struggle that he is facing. You know let me point to three key areas that I think that we ought to spend some time focusing on that would clearly be key ingredients of a build better recovery. You know yes this was supposed to be a super year for conservation for biodiversity. I think the one thing that this year certainly has achieved unfortunately but still achieved is that I don't think anyone is taking nature for the importance of nature has been made made incredibly clear to us either in small personal ways or kind of at the global the global scale but it still tends to be a terrestrial led conversation. I'm struck at by at how much momentum there is with carbon and forest conservation and restoration on the terrestrial side but the oceans are really really lagging we just don't have that 20 years to catch up. So let me point to three sort of core areas. The first is the importance of marine protected areas and the link back of marine protected areas to economies from tourism to resilience for coastlines to obviously fisheries you know at large. We have only a fraction of the ocean protected I don't want to get into exactly what that number is because it depends on how you count it but I think that there's quite good consensus that we need at least 30% of the planet under some form of strong conservation management and when it comes to the oceans we're nowhere near it. So we for example partnering with several other organizations including Pew and Minduru and the GEF to really focus on 18 million square kilometers of ocean about 5% of what we need and really on a on a quick push to try to get that over the next 10 years. The second is fisheries and when I talk about fisheries I am specifically focusing on community-based fisheries the off-market fisheries that over half the planet depends on and over half the fishers whose livelihoods completely depend on it. As you think about the recovery as we start working through the recovery that is the place to really lean in. You know I'm just thinking about this because emphasis is in the conversation but you know when when Modi shut down India initially with this quite draconian 21 days of lockdown and I'm not going into whether it worked or not he did make a certain point which I thought was very very very good. He basically said that if we don't lock down India for 21 days we're gonna we're gonna push it back by 21 years and what he meant by that really is that most of the planet you know still relies very much on a rural economy where I am confident that all of the money that is going into the recovery certainly in the United States is going towards the big industries the key sectors that are city-based the rural economy is getting completely left behind and that's where the oceans and the fisheries and the fisher communities particularly these community-based fisheries communities comes into play. You know if that rural urban migration that has been going on as long as I've been alive for the first time I bet has reversed and that means that for that one family who sent someone into the city to make money in order to send that first person to school that's now been pushed back by an entire generation regardless of how quickly the recovery happens so that's why community-based fisheries has to have enormous amount of support from us because it is a fast pathway for those rural economies and then finally blue carbon nature-based solutions to climate both on the adaptation side but also on the mitigation side we are surging ahead on the terrestrial side I mean just my organization alone in terms of partnerships with Mastercard or Apple or or P&G massive commitments to protect nature for climate but virtually all of it is on the terrestrial side just this week actually last week we had the first blue carbon project this was in Suspata Columbia that received the carbon verification standards the first carbon verification standards in the world for blue carbon that just happened last week so I think that if we want to see what I think is the largest transfer of wealth from from the rich to the not so rich that we're going to see in conservation which is essentially driven by the need to protect forests and carbon-rich environments we also need to stimulate the nature-based climate solutions that are coming from the oceans from mangroves coral reefs coastal communities so thank you thank you very much that's a perfect tea up for for this discussion so Barkha I want to turn to you your country has witnessed terrible environmental disasters over the last several months with the big oil spill has been also hard hit by the pandemic and yet you are have been continuing to lead and and speak out for the importance of social sustainable ocean management at the center of the response to those crises and I wonder if you could talk a little bit better from that perspective I mean what does a blue recovery look like in Mauritius and in the broader region well thank you thank you Jim and thanks for having me on the panel and I would just like to point out that prior to joining this panel I spoke to fellow shapers from the Victoria hub in Seychelles from the Rodrigues hub and from the Portless hub so this is very much the voice of young people from the Indian Ocean when we talk about blue recovery initially at the start of the year we were thinking let us tie through the COVID-19 pandemic and then the MV Warkascio vessel crashed headlong into one of our most important coral reefs in Mauritius and later broke apart spilling at least 1000 tons of bunker fuel and other toxins into a very ecologically sensitive area it is a very very tragic event and I believe it is perhaps a turning point in the history of Mauritius and its impacts will only be known after a few months they will keep unfolding but there are at least four lessons that we can take from this lesson in from this tragedy that we will have to use to build back better the first is what this has shown is the absolute need to center agile governance as a key pillar of promoting the blue economy at the moment there are so many exciting developments that are happening in various hubs in various technological hubs whether we're talking about autonomous vehicles satellite data um biotech or synthetic biology all of these innovations are crucial to steering to clearing the path for a blue economy that is sustainable exciting and also inclusive however the public sector does not necessarily match the pace of that innovation and we needed to do that this is the first point the second point is building a blue economy based on people-driven innovation I'm sure that you have heard the moment local people in Mauritius heard that oil was leaking out of the MV Bacchuscio they rushed to the coast and they started cutting their own hair in an attempt to build booms to contain the oil spill they were makeshift booms but online there was also mobilization with people trying to come up with different models different ideas the diaspora united and all this wealth of ideas needs to have an outlet if in the space of a crisis people can come up with ideas imagine what they can do if you give them the space to build a blue economy that is centered on their ideas this is something we have also witnessed as a shaper with with seeing blue an initiative that a shaper led where young people from coastal communities came up with such brilliant ideas which needed to be plugged into policy which needed to be supported by the right systems which needed to be supported by mentorship and funds at the moment the response to the Bacchuscio is also fixed on one citizen led data collection effort to assess the ongoing impacts and local knowledge has been critical so we cannot have a blue economy a recovery for a blue based on a blue economy unless you have the people right at the center the third point is data data and more data but i believe young kill will speak about it so a lot of the questions that are being asked is that are being asked are that how could a vessel of this magnitude just crash into a reef how can we don't know about vessels how can we don't know about our oceans now that we have so much technology at our disposal there is no excuse whatsoever for coastal countries for people in coastal countries not to know what is in the waters this is absolutely crucial that we bring science led policy and that it is made in such a transparent manner that people can get involved and the final thing jim the fourth lesson that we learned from this very sad event is the necessity to invest further in regenerative technology at this point in time we are we are heading to a point where regenerative technology was seen something as a oh i've given up there's nothing more to be done so this is not something we should be considering but what we've seen the impact in the mangroves the impact on the local coast the southeast coast we will need to be investing in that and finally jim um the prime minister of st luccia made a lot of important points that strongly resonated with me as someone from a small island developing state at the start of the pandemic there was a sense of purpose and people thought okay climate change we have an initial drop in emissions we recognize that inequality is a big deal unless everyone is safe nobody is safe by diversity we recognize the need to protect wildlife otherwise the risk of zoonotic diseases will increase but then all of that was reversed after the initial drop in emissions we had record high emissions after the initial recognition of inequality we realized that there has been pandemic profiteering obscene pandemic profiteering a high level of public debt which will affect my generation in particular loss of jobs and income and biodiversity which has had the living planet report which is very very depressing but all of this goes to show that there has been an individualization of responsibility which is a very damaging myth we need people to design systems the public sector to set them up and the private sector to optimize and use them thank you jim parker thank you i think you've brought into sharp sharp relief the the multiple dimensions of rising to this challenge and and actually at the difficulty of sustaining that sense of common purpose that characterized the early days of the pandemic so um so thank you for that uh drunkel i want to turn to you um i think over the last six months all of us have become more digital in our daily lives uh for better or for worse um but we certainly have a keen interest in in how the emerging power of digital technology can make a difference on the challenges um we're talking about here um what opportunities do you see for a digital technology to help advance uh ocean health and build a more resilience uh ocean and society yeah thanks jim so it's it's it's a brilliant question i think what struck me about the opening part of this whole debate is how do we make this tangible and not keep it at high level ivory child discussions right so there's so many brilliant solutions out there like at grassroots level in different countries and different geographies with different um societal aims and goals and and so i so if we take i'll take a couple of examples of companies that i've mentored over the last um couple of years so one is for example saffi saffi pads they they create um sanitation products for women from banana stem fibers that would be one example and i'll come back to that in a minute ocean bottle they they use recycled plastic from the ocean to create beautifully designed water bottles these grassroots startups are amazing supported by investment funds like catapult ocean and and that's brilliant now where i see digitalization come in is number one to join these stories together so so how do we start communicating all these amazing things we we heard from the prime minister of st luccia about sargasso and and the opportunities there and to start up there three years ago i was in mexico and to loom having exactly the same conversation so is is mexico and st luccia talking um you know how do we start to drive these conversations so that um we start to see that the power of um that's greater than one single organization or one idea so digitalization in that regard gives the opportunity for connectivity and digital ecosystems to share knowledge and the second thing it does and i think this is crucial based upon the announcement of the common esg metrics i believe so far that as we've measured esg the e has been really prominent and the s and g have have not been they've kind of taken a vaccine and i think they need to be considered in equal importance so that when there is an idea it needs to be supporting the local society and it also needs to be supporting for example diversity in in the gene as a simple example so by having that common set of metrics against which large corporates can sign up and agree to that means there is a single direction which many companies in the digital ecosystem can contribute to that's critical otherwise we're going to have lots of grassroots ideas that have wonderful traction in a very localized space but we need to we need to exponentially grow this very very quickly the other thing with digitalization coming back to your point bark about data for sure date data's key um but it's also about providing transparency so exposing and and promoting transparency of for example supply chains across across the oceans um whether that's shipping whether that's fishing whatever it might be that transparency and visibility is something that large tech large digitalization can provide and technologies with microservices that that connect into the the smaller ideas means that you can bring this together to have a greater power so so i i feel that digitalization from a corporate level provides communication and provides measurements and progress and it also provides the ability to have exponential progress great thank you john cool um there are there are so many threads we could pull out of this conversation and we have limited time but i want to i want to pull one and coming from silicon valley not surprising perhaps which one i choose um but i want to pick up on your your remarks on technology and and circle back to the panel on on how that thread could run through the several things we're talking about and sanjana i'll start with you um i mean you would of the several things you emphasize i mean one was the the vital role of small scale fishers um in in rural economies and in rural food security and their centrality to building a resilient economy as you think about that ambition i mean what thoughts do you have about the role technology can play in technological innovation can play in helping us to create a brighter future for those communities you can also talk about mpa's if you like um but great if you could start with small scale fishers thank you uh so look i think everyone would agree that technology has a enormous role to play um i think we've all been i did my graduate work in in in silicon valley as well in that part of the world and you know when i was in grad school we were stunned at the leaps that were happening in technology i'm still stunned at it i'm also somewhat disappointed about how little it's been applied into conservation and particularly real world conservation problems at scale so you know outside of the study of the very very big so being able to see the planet from space and being able to map it um whether it's a gis arc info asry system or google earth type of system you know that's one big innovation the other one is the study of the very very small being able to get into sort of the dna and understand lineages parentage population structures etc there hasn't been bigger breakthroughs outside of those two in tech you know conservation in the field still feels very much like the same conservation in the field that i was used to 30 years ago whereas everything else from communications to banking to how i order my food how i travel when i travel again or not has has completely been revolutionized so we've been waiting for this revolution and the problem is it almost always starts and ends with drums um so the so the challenge with the tech is not that the tech isn't there but the the folks who focus on tech aren't talking to the people on the ground who are dealing with kind of the real world challenges and then asking how do you really scale it so sometimes the tech is so far advanced that when you actually try to apply it in a place you quickly run into into a challenge um uh and other times you know you by applying tech you actually take jobs away from people who you could be employing in another way now i don't want to be negative about this by any any stretch of the imagination you know in kiribati you know tech has been used amazingly to protect phoenix islands protected area with with specific targeting of ships that have violated the marine protected area for tuna um there are some amazing systems that are watching the oceans new ones are being developed all the time with understanding you know um marine carbon in a much more detailed way on rixala and others uh you know working on it through national geographic so i'm a big proponent of it but i am also really making a plea that the folks who are thinking and working on those solutions understand the enormous barrier to applying it in the places that we need to say uh west papua coastal mozambique west africa coastal libaria where the challenges if you if you just create the solution without the ability to implement and sustain that implementation or implementation over time um it chokes out it only becomes a cool example yeah okay no great thank you um joncle i'm going to come to you on the affordability in the second but uh but first um barca i mean you actually one of the points you highlighted was the importance of of data and of putting data in the hands of local communities so they know the resources that are at stake so they're in a position to manage those resources better um can you speak a little bit more to that what's what's that going to take i mean what are your ideas about how that happens and part responding to the concerns that san jim has raised thank you for for circling back to that point jim um and actually as san jay was was um making his intervention it it really hit me that indeed we should be marrying technology and conservation not politics and conservation um because a lot of um ocean-related ventures tend to be driven by heavily politicized agendas using data and putting it in the hands of communities whether it's in a very um granular form of getting everyone to keep tracking the change of the coastline the accumulation of um oil as has been the case in Mauritius um or building observatories in strategic points whether using all the SIDS as networks to to build those observatories it is it is really really crucial to to um treat it as a public good and treat it with care obviously there are some um some pieces of information that uh for defense purposes cannot be shared but data on the ocean should be a public good and why that is also important is when we have been drafting blue economy strategies and this is not new countries have been drafting blue economy strategies for over a decade now um many sectors in the blue economy are very capital intensive technology intensive which presents a barrier to the communities that are supposed to access the benefits of the blue economy but having data identifying the gaps where local knowledge could be plugged in or even those gaps where local innovation could be used to to find a solution would actually help us build a more inclusive blue economy so at the moment I am very excited to see how the data collection by local citizens in Mauritius is going to play out and I believe this could be a case study um in the future or putting people right in the middle of something which we would say is something that can only be handled by experts but actually is making use of local knowledge so we shall see how that goes perfect thank you so so John cool back to you I mean as I think um we're actually both comments highlight one of the clear challenges is has been you know what are business models that actually support the development and dissemination of deployment of technologies that can be used by communities who are trying to manage their resources so and do you have ideas from your vantage point or examples for your vantage point of of how people have cracked that challenge and and begun to step up to some of the needs that's that Parker describes it's a really good question I'd say I'd actually like to go back to the point that um why are we so far behind with ocean when we're fine with the earth and we're so far ahead and I think it's because I think generally people don't understand what water does and how important it is we all live on the earth every single day it's only those in island states that are living and breathing and feeling the impact of ocean so I think to to to bring that back to the point of affordability and moving things forward is is time that understanding of well why is water critical to my business my household my life my life my my future and that needs to be completely cracked and exposed and the point at which water then becomes a crisis for a given industry is then when when things start to shift so you're seeing in for example the consumer goods industry with the the loop model that was we talked about last year at this summit and it's a brilliant example that goes down to end consumer that says well actually you can have recycled bottles for your shampoo or maybe you don't even need to have water in your detergent the first place you could add you could add that afterwards so it's the understanding of what is in you know what is water and how important it is that's first of all number one and the technology is not necessarily IT technologies but the the technologies physical technologies to extract water from the original product is super key so I'd say loop is a brilliant brilliant example that's gathering pace in with Nestle with Unilever and the lights and PNG and on a on a digital perspective I think I think blockchain kind of got too big for its boots everybody thought blockchain was going to be this holy grail of amazingness but actually the reality is for those on the front line those farmers fishermen they they don't benefit from it at all it's the corporates and the consumers who feel like yes we've done something good for the world so so we need to strip back everything use technology like blockchain like traceability solutions through integration to just expose very simply how everything is connected together and why it's important comes back to education and and simple technologies like QR code technology or traceability digital fingerprint ID is much cheaper to implement and can actually impact the end fisherman or farmer okay now thank you very much and I'm really sorry that we are out of time because there's a lot to talk about here and while I started with tech I mean just let me highlight that that we have also highlighted here the vital importance of governance of finding ways to forge common purpose on these challenges and and on finding ways to mobilize the cash or the capital that will make meeting these challenges possible