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Thinking Differently About the Rainforests · New Thinking for a New World

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to New Thinking for a New World, a Tilburg Foundation podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I am Alan Stoga, your host.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Each week I bring you conversations with people who think differently about the great issues that are shaping our world.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Geopolitics, disruptive tech, mass migration, the changing climate, culture wars, all of it is grist for our mill.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy listening.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I also hope you will let me know what you think.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: and that you join the conversation at tellbergfoundation.org.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: And now for today's episode of New Thinking for a New World.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Hello, I'm Alan Stoga, Chairman of the Tellberg Foundation.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: And welcome to this conversation about the Amazon and Congo River basins and their futures, assuming they have futures.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Over the years, the Tellberg Foundation has focused on several really critical issues.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: One is leadership and one is the environment and conservation climate writ large.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Today's conversation brings both of those together because the three people who will be having this conversation are all past winners of the Tullberg SNF Elias and Global Leadership Prize and exactly exemplify the kind of global, ethical, courageous, innovative leadership.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: that the Telberg Foundation, supported by the Stavros-Niakos Foundation, seeks to encourage.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: But today's conversation, very precisely, is focused on the Congo and Amazon River basins.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: And for that, I've asked my colleague and friend, Sam Muller, to lead this conversation.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Alan.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: When I was on the board of WF International and WF Netherlands, we often used to say if... The Amazon and the Congo somehow reach critical tipping points.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: The consequences for humanity will be absolutely awful, and there are enough models to show that that is happening.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So that's what we want to talk about.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: What can we do?
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: How can we make that better?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: We have with us two amazing speakers.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Both of them, as Alan said, are actually there.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: So let me first introduce Gladys Kalema, she's a Ugandan wildlife veterinarian and founder of two amazing initiatives, Conservation through Public Health and the Gorilla Conservation Coffee.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I've had the privilege of visiting her and be windy and actually see it happen and I've actually drank the coffee and I know it's absolutely great.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: What makes her work so special is that She has connected saving gorillas, saving the forests with the lives of people and somehow produced a winning deal that is very sustainable and that is still up and running as we speak.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: Our second guest speaker on the panel is Fernando Trujillo from Colombia, a marine biologist.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: He has just spent seventeen hours in the boat, reaching a place from which he speaks to us at the moment.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So he is in the Amazon, he is where it happens.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: And Fernando has done a lot of research, written a lot of papers, been a member of a lot of policy specialist groups, research groups, works on River Dolphins, as I said.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: And it's an amazing mix of actually being there where it happens and writing and thinking great stuff.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: So thank you for being with us, despite your long journey, Fernando.
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Fran.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: I am very glad to be here today with Gladys, with you, and discuss a little bit what is happening in Congo and Amazon.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Wonderful.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: How things didn't be windy, Gladys?
• 4:19
  Speaker 0: I'd say things in windy are really not too bad.
• 4:23
  Speaker 0: It's a little bit of a quiet tourism season.
• 4:26
  Speaker 0: When I got here, they told me it hadn't rained for a while for a week, but as soon as they arrived, it rained a little bit.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: So, dear audience, what we'd like to do is we're going to kick off with a conversation with some questions.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Basically, first looking a little bit at the analysis, what are some of the issues?
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: that prevent us from saving these two amazing places of nature.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: After the analysis, look a little bit at the kind of solutions, responses that we know of.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: And we will be inviting questions from the audience as well.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: We would gladly answer them.
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: And insofar as you detect any bias from my end, I suppose what I bring to the table here is knowledge on governance and rule of law.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: But we'll see where we can use that.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: So Gladys and Fernando, maybe we could start just looking at the analysis of why is it proving so difficult despite all the effort that's been put in it for the last few decades to stop the decline of both basins, the Amazon.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: and the Congo Basin.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: And one of the things one often reads about, hears about a lot, is the balance between the top-down approach and the bottom-up approach, whereby the top-down approach is often said is too top-down, it doesn't really reach the grassroots level.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: At the same time, only bottom-up could stay very small and doesn't have enough impact.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: And with some of the things that are happening in the world today with the multilateral order and stress, this may also be maybe an even more important thing to look at.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: So maybe you could just reflect a little bit on this first part of the analysis.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Is there an issue with the top-down, bottom-up balance, and how would it need redressing?
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: But we'll get to that later.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Is there an issue top-down, bottom-down, bottom-up?
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: Over to you, Gladys, maybe to start with.
• 6:41
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 6:42
  Speaker 0: Sam, thanks for bringing that up.
• 6:44
  Speaker 0: It's a very important issue.
• 6:46
  Speaker 0: There's been a lot of resources put into the Congo Basin, which I'll talk more about because it's the area where we work close to and have a couple of small programs there.
• 6:58
  Speaker 0: in the Vironga area.
• 6:59
  Speaker 0: I would say that the biggest problem in the top-down is it doesn't, nothing is really sustainable because once the genders pushed from, not from the people who are actually facing all the threats to the wildlife, it's not really going to last.
• 7:16
  Speaker 0: Once the funding runs out, then everybody goes back to doing what they were doing before.
• 7:21
  Speaker 0: And in an area like the Congo Basin, there's a lot of conflict as well.
• 7:24
  Speaker 0: just to complicate issues even further.
• 7:27
  Speaker 0: you know, most other areas have to deal with poverty, live in biodiversity hotspots, areas with a lot of wildlife, there's poverty.
• 7:36
  Speaker 0: And so a lot of organizations have brought up integrated conservation and development initiatives.
• 7:43
  Speaker 0: At conservation through public health, we also added health.
• 7:47
  Speaker 0: So one health is part of our ICD, where we improve the health of the people, the environment, the people, the animals and the environment together.
• 7:54
  Speaker 0: but then there's the added complication when you move to DRC and other countries in the Congo Basin is the conflict.
• 8:03
  Speaker 0: It's very difficult to carry out conservation work where there's conflict, where there's very little governance, where there's rebel activities, there's very little control.
• 8:12
  Speaker 0: Systems are not really working anymore and it's much harder to conserve wildlife and to do anything about the climate.
• 8:21
  Speaker 0: I need the Congo basin, I guess, is the lungs of the world.
• 8:23
  Speaker 0: That's together with the Amazon.
• 8:25
  Speaker 0: So yeah, it is a very big issue and talk down approaches are not really helping because it's just the funds are starting to stop and they're not really addressing the basic needs that people have to face every day.
• 8:37
  Speaker 0: You know, even if they get goats, remember when we started programs where we support our village health and conservation teams or community conservation health workers, even the ones in DRC with livestock.
• 8:48
  Speaker 0: They'll say, oh, but in Congo, you may give someone livestock, and then the next day someone steals it, and no one's going to do anything about it.
• 8:55
  Speaker 0: Because of the lack of governance, the conflict in that area, it couldn't be the rebels who take their livelihoods.
• 9:02
  Speaker 0: Whereas in a more stable environment like Uganda, there's a community structure that ensures that that doesn't happen, because there aren't rebel activities.
• 9:10
  Speaker 0: So yeah, so all these kind of things, it needs to really be community-led.
• 9:14
  Speaker 0: Communities end up finding that.
• 9:17
  Speaker 0: And it's there the ones who are really driving, being empowered to lead these efforts and being supported in more ways where they come up with the options and the solutions to what they think should be done.
• 9:31
  Speaker 0: And then the people up there with the money listen to them and try and support them.
• 9:35
  Speaker 0: in that way, rather than coming up with agendas from elsewhere, thinking they'll just work in these particular areas.
• 9:43
  Speaker 0: I think that could help, but it is a big issue.
• 9:46
  Speaker 0: in this part of the world.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: So, conflict as an impediment, the importance of really grass-rooting, and I guess that's what you've been able to do is somehow find your way from the connect be windy to Kampala and even wider, but really starting bottom up.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: Fernando, what's your experience on this one?
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's not about which one to pick, top-down or bottom-up.
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: I think we did it both.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: And we need to connect the two approaches.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: And this is the problem.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: They are disconnected.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: And with this disconnection, in some cases from the cities, people decide the future of a region like the Amazon or maybe the Congo without a deep knowledge of what is happening there and what are the needs of people.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So I think it's very important to build and connect the two different and maybe that will be a consequence each one of the other.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: When you only are looking in the scale of the region, of the locality, you lost the whole approach.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: And when you are in a city, you are losing the small scale.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So you need both.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: And I think in the Amazon is similar situation that Congo, as Gladys just mentioned.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: We have a very weak governance in the Amazon.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: And this low presence of the governments in such a big area, we are talking about seven millions of square kilometers and nine different countries, make it more easy that illegal groups use flowers there.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: So we have a lot of organized crime.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of illicit economic activities.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: And of course, people have a lot of needs in that region.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: So they need to find a way to survive.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: And it's very easy for this criminal organization just to capture the attention of the people, because there is not a very strong government offering a different path for that.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And one example of this disconnection to mention some is it is very nice.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: We have a lot of regional agreements.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: We have the cops, the conventions.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: We are increasing the areas protected in the Amazon.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: But we are not connecting with the people, with the ground.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: And we don't have the money, the financial support to go with this.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: We just finished the Cup of Thirty in Belen.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: And I feel a little bit frustrated.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: because the result was a little bit poor.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: There are some good news, like the acknowledgement of the importance of the indigenous people, and they need to be part of the solutions.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: But still, we don't have the funding to move forward with the actions we need to implement.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: So we need to implement actions, and these actions have to be built from the two different perspectives.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: top-down and bottom-up.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So I think we need to integrate this.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: The integration of all these initiatives are very important.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Fernando.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: Well, that immediately brings us to the second part of the analysis of what we often hear, why it's not really happening.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: besides the top-down, bottom-up quandary is the integration problem.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: So the fact that all these different areas of expertise, and you already mentioned a few governance, a rule of law, access to justice, economy, people having enough to eat, biodiversity measures, climate change measures, they're all happening in silos, and they're not really sufficiently integrated.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: And that really is a break on process progress.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And maybe, Gladys, you could say a few things.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Have you experienced this?
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: And if so, how in your work?
• 13:58
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 14:00
  Speaker 0: It is a big issue.
• 14:01
  Speaker 0: Integration is a big issue.
• 14:03
  Speaker 0: And some of the issues that... Fernando just brought up.
• 14:10
  Speaker 0: The communities can't decide when each particular issue happens at any one time.
• 14:15
  Speaker 0: They can't decide.
• 14:16
  Speaker 0: this is the day when floods come in my area.
• 14:20
  Speaker 0: This is the next day when I'm going to have to deal with people stealing my gold or then rebels coming to my home.
• 14:29
  Speaker 0: So integrated approaches are really needed.
• 14:32
  Speaker 0: And we've found that we've been implementing integrated approaches for over twenty years now, twenty-two years.
• 14:41
  Speaker 0: It's gone well, but the biggest hurdle with all of that is most done as a single sector.
• 14:50
  Speaker 0: It's very hard for them to combine conservation, development, governance, human rights, all of that.
• 14:56
  Speaker 0: It's very hard for them to look at it together.
• 14:58
  Speaker 0: Very few of them look at it holistically, whether it's big bilaterals or, you know, like the big governments or foundations, a lot of people are just single sector.
• 15:10
  Speaker 0: So the fundraising is very difficult for integrated approaches, but approaches which are not integrated are not long lasting.
• 15:18
  Speaker 0: And I think we need to really focus on showing the value of addressing all these together.
• 15:24
  Speaker 0: Because without addressing the conflict to the lack of governance in such areas like the two basins, Congo and Amazon, you're not going to go very far with preventing deforestation.
• 15:34
  Speaker 0: degradation, all the issues that keep happening are going to keep happening unless we start looking at it in a different way.
• 15:41
  Speaker 0: And I think integration just needs to be done holistically.
• 15:44
  Speaker 0: There has to be a lot of advocacy.
• 15:47
  Speaker 0: So donors, governments understand this.
• 15:51
  Speaker 0: We help to influence the formation of the National One Health Platform, which has the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Tourism, Ministry of Environment, and they rotate the chair.
• 16:01
  Speaker 0: and also the National Population Health Environment Network, which also has Minister of Finance and Economic Development.
• 16:10
  Speaker 0: So we are there beginning to see the value of integrating things.
• 16:15
  Speaker 0: And they visit us and they try and take them to other parts of Uganda.
• 16:18
  Speaker 0: And in Congo, we're also trying to set up this similar model in the communities in the Vrungas and to a certain extent, Eastern Lolan gorillas, like in Michael National Park.
• 16:29
  Speaker 0: It's all very much like communities see everything at once, their lives are integrated, so solutions should be integrated in order to address these very issues.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: So just to build on that very quickly, before I go to you Fernando, you're kind of saying that in your experience of Uganda at least, government understand this integration problem fairly well and they can be used to actually solve it or respond to it.
• 17:01
  Speaker 0: Yes, I believe governments can be.
• 17:02
  Speaker 0: They've shown a really positive response.
• 17:05
  Speaker 0: As long as they have money, they've shown a very positive response to scale up these approaches.
• 17:10
  Speaker 0: For example, at each district, they're now trying to probably make sure they all have one health committee, which have everybody there, the natural resource manager, the medical, the health officer, the agriculture, the development, the vet, they're all together.
• 17:25
  Speaker 0: planning together to do what they can do in their areas.
• 17:28
  Speaker 0: So I feel that the government is more responsive, actually, because they're facing these situations quite a lot all the time.
• 17:35
  Speaker 0: What's the biggest hurdle now is the donors, who are still very much single-sector minded, but some of them are coming around and realizing that you can't have long-term impact without supporting integrated efforts.
• 17:49
  Speaker 0: And everyone will think governance, conservation, climate.
• 17:53
  Speaker 0: That's very far from each other, but actually it's very connected.
• 17:56
  Speaker 0: It really needs to be done in order for things for us to have a long-term impact.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: Fernando, how does it pan out in your part of the world, this integration problem?
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: When you are using the expression government, you need to understand that inside the same government you have different interests.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: One thing is talking about these problems with the environment ministry, and another thing is to talk about with the energy and mines ministry.
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: They are in the same government, but they have different priorities.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: So, again, we know, and the governments know, that we are close to a tipping point in the Amazon.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: The resources are just collapsing.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: We are polluting the water with mercury, because the illegal gold mining, things like that.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: But one good example, what's happened in doing the last COP, that there was a proposal.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: to avoid and to stop the use of exploration of fuel and fossil energies and mining the Amazon.
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: And only Colombia was the only country that said, yes, we can do that.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: But the other countries, they don't.
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: They are not going to commit with that because they, in the case of Brazil, for example, they are the first country exporting meat.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: to the world, to the planet, to China, for example.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: There are a lot of reserves of gold in the Amazon.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: And with the green transition as well, people are starting to look for different minerals to produce this transition.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: So at the end, it's an economic equation.
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: What can I do as a government?
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: to try to avoid the forestation and the pollution of the Amazon, but at the same time, earn a lot of money and do a lot of business.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: So it's not so simple.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: It's a difficult one.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: It's very tricky.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: So I think it's the same in many countries, and we need a politic willing.
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: We need really to understand and to change, because... Yes, we are talking probably Gladys and me, we are talking with the Minister of the Environment, and we are doing very incredible things promoting regional agreements.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: But on the other hand, we have the economic engines going in the different opposite direction.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: So that's the best and the most important and difficult challenge to talk with just one government and the coherence of a government.
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: regarding such an important areas like the Amazon and the Congo.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: That's a big one.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So you're saying, in many ways, you're saying that the government can talk green with one voice, but could talk economy with another voice and you somehow need to make that work.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: A third issue that keeps, of course, coming up, especially now, and it was quite visible in Berlin with the United States not being present, et cetera.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: are the large political and economic shifts that are happening at the moment.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: And that also maybe provide challenges or opportunities, but certainly provide challenges for saving these two, the Amazon and the Congo Basin.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: Let me start with you this time, Fernando.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: How do you experience any of the consequences of the political changes that are happening, the shifts that are happening, the economic shifts that are happening at the moment?
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, this is a very, very serious problem because in the case of Colombia and the countries here, every four or five years, we change the government.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: And usually we are just shifting from one movement or party to another one at the extremes.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: We are moving from extreme to extreme.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: So every time it changed the government, we took one year for the government to understand where they are standing.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And they refuse to continue the efforts the government, the past going west, what we're doing with the environment.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: And then when you have one year, they recognize that there were some good things that happening with the last government.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: So we need to build something behind the parties and the political movements and understand that we need long term process.
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: to protect areas like the Amazon and the Congo.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: And we know the basics.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: We know that we need to provide economic alternatives for the local people.
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: We know that we need to protect indigenous people and to give some security and justice with the ownership of the lands.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: We know we need to keep the biodiversity.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: We know that we need to finish and control the illegal economic activity, the criminal forces in the areas.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: That would be the priority for any government.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Doesn't matter the political party, but for some reason we lose time.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: And now the political situation not only in the Amazon, but in the planet.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: We are talking about the sixty different conflicts, armed conflicts in the planet and the European Union need to build the increase the percentage of investment for the NATO and all these cooperation that the European countries were doing with the Amazon or with the Congo just going down and the same with the United States.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: We lost some international support from USAID, for example.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: And in many countries in Africa and in Latin America, all the projects were just interrupted.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: So that is a critical situation.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: And then, for example, this year, we were talking at the COP.
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: We needed three hundred billions of dollars per year to put in practice all the actions we need to control the weather, the climate.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: And we only committed with six point one billion from the three hundred.
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: So yes, we are happy for these six billions of dollars, but it's not enough.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: It's not enough.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: And we are just reaching the tipping points.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: So it's very critical.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: The governments understand that this is a short, medium, and long-term process, and that they need to build as a state, not as a government, but as a state.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: They need to build something strong.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: For example, the Antarctic.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: The Antarctic has an agreement, international agreements, between all the countries to avoid mining, to extract resources.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: We need some kind of agreement for the Amazon and for the Congo and for the Southeast of Asia, with the forest.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Some kind of agreement like the Antarctic, that yes, we understand.
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: this is a very critical area for the planet, for the planet.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: So that's the main point.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: We need to make that the political people understand.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Fernando.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: That's really forcefully made.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Gladius, how do you experience the political shifts that are happening at the moment?
• 25:55
  Speaker 0: Yes, I would like to agree very much with Fernando that it is quite difficult at the moment.
• 26:04
  Speaker 0: There's much less support for conservation and climate.
• 26:10
  Speaker 0: It's going further down the agenda, very sadly.
• 26:13
  Speaker 0: And many donors are now shifting and governments, because they fall out.
• 26:18
  Speaker 0: Unfortunately, a country like Uganda or Congo, many of these countries in Africa are very dependent on external funding.
• 26:26
  Speaker 0: And so USAID, the loss of the shutting down of USAID really affected our countries.
• 26:34
  Speaker 0: Health and education struggled.
• 26:36
  Speaker 0: and so did conservation.
• 26:38
  Speaker 0: And of course, when health and education struggle and development, you know, agriculture, it also affects conservation directly and indirectly.
• 26:46
  Speaker 0: So it's a very big issue.
• 26:48
  Speaker 0: The more of the funding, more of the support is now going to defense because everything's shifting the other side, which is going to make it even more difficult to be able to protect these basins.
• 27:02
  Speaker 0: It's very sad, but it's right now, not It's coming further down the agenda.
• 27:09
  Speaker 0: It wasn't very high up at the beginning, but now it's going further down.
• 27:11
  Speaker 0: So this is kind of a big issue.
• 27:15
  Speaker 0: Maybe I would say that looking at livelihood options, I really don't know, even the livelihood options are not being supported.
• 27:25
  Speaker 0: Maybe local economies just need to be strengthened in one way or another and be less dependent on external funding.
• 27:32
  Speaker 0: And maybe it's an opportunity for... people to become more resilient and find local ways of generating revenue to keep going.
• 27:42
  Speaker 0: I mean, an area like Uganda.
• 27:44
  Speaker 0: tourism works because it's safe.
• 27:47
  Speaker 0: In DRSC, tourism would work really well.
• 27:49
  Speaker 0: It's a very beautiful area, the Congo Basin, but it's a huge, the whole in conflict makes it very, very difficult to have viable tourism programs.
• 27:59
  Speaker 0: So... that in itself can bypass the government because now you're dealing directly between local communities and private sector, you know, or individuals around the world who want to just come and support in their own individual ways.
• 28:13
  Speaker 0: But everything is undermined by the insecurity in the area and the conflict.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: I'd like to just look at one last point of analysis.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: But that is the green transition and the the competition for minerals that is happening at tsunami-type proportions in many ways.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Not recently, I read an article about Chinese ports being built in Peru, roads being built, all to bring in minerals and similar kind of things are happening in the DRC.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Can you both reflect a little bit on that one as part of the analysis?
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: So the fact that this green tradition, the fight for minerals, the quest for minerals, I suppose in one way it could be, it's a curse.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, it might be an opportunity.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: How do you see it, Fernando?
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, as you say, it can be a curse, but also an opportunity.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: The quest for minerals in the Amazon have been in place for the last four centuries.
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: focus mainly in the gold.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: And now, because the instability in the economy of the planet, the price of the gold just reached and overpassed the hundred thousand dollars per kilogram.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: That is huge.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: And always I give the same example.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: One kilogram of cocaine is twenty thousand dollars and one kilogram of gold is more than hundred thousand.
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: So five times more.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: So the criminal organizations are taking over.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: the Amazon.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: There is an estimation of more than five hundred thousand people working for the organized grant in the Amazon.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And now with the green transition, the lithium and the rare minerals are at the new quest.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: And there are new landscapes in the Amazon with the deforestation to capture these rare minerals.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: They need to remove a lot of ground.
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: to take the minerals.
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: So this is a new paradigm.
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: We want to live the fossil and we want to do better with electricity, but all the batteries are just taking us to moving in the wrong direction.
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: One mobile phone, one just mobile phone, we have sixty nine different minerals in one mobile phone, sixty nine.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: So we are just having a strong dependence of these new minerals of the green transition.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: So we need to look in a different way.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: In the Amazon, for example, the hydroelectrics were a very good idea.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Use the movements of water to produce electricity.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: But the scale in the way we did was very bad.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: We interrupt the flow of the rivers.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: And this is... not the thing we need to do.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: We have more than three hundred dams interrupting the flow of rivers in the Amazon.
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: Now with the technology, we can combine solar energy and with aerodynamic energy with the rivers, but without interrupting the whole river.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: Just small parts and we generate the electricity that the towns need.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: For example, now in the Amazon, most of the cities rely on petrol.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: coming from far away to have the electricity.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: So that's very, very weird.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: We need to think about the cities of the future, how we can make sustainable from the energetical point of view.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: And we need to start to think about that.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: And what is the reason?
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: And probably it's happening the same in Congo.
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Demography.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Demography is growing up fast in the Amazon.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: We have more than fifty millions of people living in the Amazon.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: And the cities are just growing and growing.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: And if we don't plan now, in this moment, later will be very difficult to stop the impact of this new green energy we want to implement in areas like Amazon or Congo.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: That's yet another element to add to our difficult puzzle, the demography.
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Glandis, how do you reflect on the green transition in your part of the world?
• 32:51
  Speaker 0: In our part of the world, as you said, it's a challenge and an opportunity.
• 32:57
  Speaker 0: And there is the issue of minerals.
• 33:00
  Speaker 0: The Congo Benson is a place which is rich with minerals.
• 33:04
  Speaker 0: And unfortunately, you could sometimes call it the curse of Congo.
• 33:08
  Speaker 0: especially DRC.
• 33:10
  Speaker 0: Because of it, different foreign governments, everybody wants those minerals.
• 33:15
  Speaker 0: And it's making that country very difficult to develop because there's a lot of, it fuels all the rebel activities, which is a very difficult situation.
• 33:26
  Speaker 0: And the poor governance means that they can't get whatever resources come from minerals to reduce poverty in the area.
• 33:34
  Speaker 0: It should be a very rich country where the citizens are doing well.
• 33:37
  Speaker 0: but they're actually doing very, very badly because there's not equitable distribution of wealth.
• 33:43
  Speaker 0: And when it goes down to where the forests are, you know, where the gorillas and other wildlife are, it's even worse.
• 33:49
  Speaker 0: So you may, you know, there's been like, oh, yeah, there's oil in Virunga, but who's going to benefit from it?
• 33:54
  Speaker 0: You know, is it just going to be a few individuals or is it going to be something that's really going to develop people so that they don't have to then depend on the forest to survive?
• 34:05
  Speaker 0: But unfortunately, again, everything is underbind by the lack of governance in the area.
• 34:11
  Speaker 0: So even if we could try and benefit from the Green Revolution, the lack of governance is going to prevent it happening, unless something is done about the governance, which will then also help with the conflict.
• 34:22
  Speaker 0: So that's a really big issue.
• 34:23
  Speaker 0: Yes, as Fernando mentioned, solar energy, all of that can help, but it's not being done.
• 34:30
  Speaker 0: It could be done, but it's not, you know, the lack of proper governance, good governance is preventing all this equitable distribution of wealth, energy, and everything that people need, not to depend on natural resources, not to have to destroy forests to survive.
• 34:48
  Speaker 0: What do war lessons from Gaza, rethinking education, peace in Ukraine, and visionary leadership have in common?
• 34:56
  Speaker 0: They are all themes from recent episodes of this podcast.
• 35:00
  Speaker 0: Check out more episodes on tellbergfoundation.org or on a platform of your choice.
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: So the picture that kind of emerges from this conversation is that on the one hand, we want to save these two basins, which seems to be a biodiversity and a climate change issue.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: And you need people who know a lot about biodiversity and climate change.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: But what's emerging out of this conversation is actually maybe that's the last thing you need.
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: What you need is economic payoff, good economic models.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: You need a state approach, a long-term state approach, rather than a government approach.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: I really like that way of framing it.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: And in that state approach, you somehow need to bring in the community.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: So it's a top-down, bottom-up type of thing.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: What keeps coming back is the importance, and we use the fluffy word governance, but what you're actually talking about is rule of law, is legal certainty, is enforcement of the rules.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: is fighting crime, is dealing with corruption, is dispute settlement at scale, both between small plots of land, but even the bigger things.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: And then you raised, Fernando, the demography question.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: We kind of know how many people will need homes and roads and cities and something in the next few decades.
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: So we need to... need to work on that.
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: And that somehow highlights then the need for both integration and ways of combining the top down and the bottom up in dealing with this.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: Gladys, going to you.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: What have you learned that works?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: What's been the magic of what you've been able to do?
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: in this integrated approach.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: And maybe I can focus a little bit also on the question of leadership, because it kind of seems to me that you need, I don't know how to call that, integrative leaders, leaders that are able to play chess on all these different boards at the same time.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: It could be leaders in government, but it could also be leaders in communities.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: Any reflections on that?
• 37:31
  Speaker 0: Yes.
• 37:32
  Speaker 0: Thank you for that question.
• 37:33
  Speaker 0: I would say that the integrated approach is the only way to really address everything in the long term.
• 37:39
  Speaker 0: And Fernando mentioned demography, high human population growth in the Amazon.
• 37:45
  Speaker 0: It's even a very big issue in the Congo and many countries in Africa.
• 37:50
  Speaker 0: Congo has over three percent human population growth rates.
• 37:57
  Speaker 0: It's a very big issue.
• 37:58
  Speaker 0: We found that we are also providing access to family planning to the communities bordering the parks where we work, using an integrated approach to population health environment, which is actually first supported by USAID.
• 38:11
  Speaker 0: We've continued doing it.
• 38:12
  Speaker 0: It's such a big need that even with limited funding or in between funding cycles, women still want to get those three monthly injections every month because they don't want to have babies every year.
• 38:23
  Speaker 0: They want to do something with their lives and the men want to balance the family budget.
• 38:27
  Speaker 0: They all want to reduce poverty.
• 38:28
  Speaker 0: So even a place like DRC where it's largely Catholic.
• 38:32
  Speaker 0: And they've not always supported contraception.
• 38:35
  Speaker 0: Historically, people want to reduce poverty in their home.
• 38:39
  Speaker 0: But contraceptives are not free in most places.
• 38:41
  Speaker 0: Whereas in places like Uganda, Kenya, other parts of Africa, it's free.
• 38:45
  Speaker 0: So there's all of that that comes in.
• 38:48
  Speaker 0: But definitely, we're finding that if presented together, it's not only about saying, you know, don't cut down trees.
• 38:55
  Speaker 0: You want to destroy the forest.
• 38:56
  Speaker 0: But you say, yes, we're here to attend to your health, your livelihood, your well-being.
• 39:01
  Speaker 0: then people think, oh, you care about me, then I'll care about the forests.
• 39:05
  Speaker 0: And there's really no need for me to go in and destroy them, because we're all going to benefit when the forests are around, for water, climate, and so many other benefits.
• 39:13
  Speaker 0: And in the case where there's tourism, tourists will come and bring money and will keep going.
• 39:18
  Speaker 0: So I think what I've found is what we do is we empower local communities to lead conservation efforts.
• 39:25
  Speaker 0: It's much easier to convince someone to change if it's someone who is their neighbor telling them.
• 39:30
  Speaker 0: that, you know, I think this is a great way to go.
• 39:32
  Speaker 0: Of course, the volunteers we work with have four hundred and thirty at the moment on Uganda side and eighty eight on the Congo side.
• 39:40
  Speaker 0: These volunteers are role models.
• 39:41
  Speaker 0: They have to be role models because you can't do something when you're not doing it.
• 39:47
  Speaker 0: And they model the kind of behaviors, good conservation, good health practices, good development practices.
• 39:54
  Speaker 0: And through that, they're able to influence others to change.
• 39:57
  Speaker 0: So in Uganda, they're reaching over fifty thousand people.
• 40:01
  Speaker 0: In Congo, they're reaching over five thousand people, getting people to really become more, to lead the effort to them themselves, to change and see this is for them and not so that they become, they realize that they have power over their destiny.
• 40:18
  Speaker 0: They don't only have to depend on the government or donors, they can actually change their lives themselves.
• 40:24
  Speaker 0: So we're doing a lot of community-led conservation work.
• 40:28
  Speaker 0: We really believe that it's the people in the area where the wildlife is who are going to change for the long term, with support from NGOs like ours, private sector, government, donors, but let them lead their conservation efforts.
• 40:41
  Speaker 0: And when they later become members of parliament, they'll be making the best decisions.
• 40:46
  Speaker 0: And you won't have to be talking about things like cutting down forests to plants, sugar cane, or things like that, that happen in this part of the world.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Fernando, just one last question on this.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: Can you see basically ten or maybe a hundred of your projects being scaled in different parts of the Amazon, basically using this integrative approach that you've pioneered?
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: Because, of course, the risk is always that they stay small and that you stay in your little region and you don't gather enough mass to really really change and create, for example, a business model for a whole country.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Can you see that happening?
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Yes, you're right.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: So far, we are islands.
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: As you said, we don't want to be islands, isolated projects, and we need to scale that.
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: So we are thinking that one positive way to do that is through international wetlands in the Amazon.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: There is a convention that is the Ramsar Convention that the countries, many countries more than hundred fifty have signed it to protect the wetlands, the water.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: The water is so key in the conservation of an area like the Amazon.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: So we have these Ramsar sites and this year in Zimbabwe we adopted a resolution where we proposed to have the river dolphins and other aquatic indicator species.
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: as a key subject of conservation in all the wetlands in the planet.
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: So this is very positive because the wetlands became hub spots for us.
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: We identify where things are working and we push these solutions in the other realms or sites.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: And we create interchange of local people going to one place to another to see how they work, for example, with the sustainable tourist.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: how they work with the future agreements, how they work with the restoration of the forest.
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: And I think it's a good way to scale the solutions, but also we need to build capacities in the local people.
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: So, for example, how many universities are in the Amazon, in the cities or in the towns of the Amazon, focused actually in the needs of the Amazon, not a general one and general approach for the country, but regarding the needs of the Amazon region.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: How many universities are having this approach?
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: I think very few, very few.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: We don't have field stations in seven regions of square kilometers.
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: Maybe we have ten field stations for the Amazon.
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: So we need to change this and scale.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: The scaling of the solution that what is working is the important.
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: I think we need to move, work a lot where things are working and scale this in a regional base.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: Right, so what you're saying, your experience is focus on things that are working and try and scale them up.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and you've cleverly used international conventions or an international treaty or something that you could hold on to to kind of scale up.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Glandis, in your experience, the scaling question, how can it work?
• 44:13
  Speaker 0: In our experience, we know that community health workers, I guess if they're one health approach, we know that community health workers exist all over the world.
• 44:21
  Speaker 0: Whatever, they're called different names everywhere, but they exist.
• 44:24
  Speaker 0: And the way that we scale up is we train community health workers to also promote conservation and climate action.
• 44:31
  Speaker 0: And anything else that comes up, some of them are also promoting tourism, others are promoting whatever comes up.
• 44:36
  Speaker 0: But then it's that they exist everywhere.
• 44:38
  Speaker 0: They tend to community health.
• 44:40
  Speaker 0: People value them.
• 44:41
  Speaker 0: they come through in a way that they care about the people.
• 44:45
  Speaker 0: And it's a very good entry point to get people to care about the forests and the wildlife.
• 44:51
  Speaker 0: So the way that we've scaled up in Congo as well, we worked with community health workers and taught them to do conservation work.
• 44:58
  Speaker 0: And all over Uganda, that's what we're doing.
• 44:59
  Speaker 0: We're working with existing community health workers, teaching them to do conservation work.
• 45:05
  Speaker 0: More recently, we've also measuring the behavior change in how the homes are changing as a result of... the behaviour change.
• 45:12
  Speaker 0: communication of the village health and conservation teams.
• 45:15
  Speaker 0: And so we come up with certain indicators which are specific to the area.
• 45:20
  Speaker 0: In winter we spawned twelve and if they have less than four out of twelve, they're red homes.
• 45:26
  Speaker 0: If they have nine and above, they're green homes.
• 45:29
  Speaker 0: And over time we've seen people changing from, you know, we have twenty three percent green to sixty percent red, sorry, green, twenty three percent green to sixty percent green.
• 45:39
  Speaker 0: in the space of two to three years.
• 45:41
  Speaker 0: because now people are being applauded for improving on their homes and we know that as long as somebody's home is a green home they're much less likely to enter the forest to destroy it because they have a viable livelihood, they have food security, we add food crop gardens, they're healthy, they're hygienic, they're not suffering, they're not sick.
• 45:59
  Speaker 0: and if wildlife comes onto their garden like gorillas people and gorillas are much less likely to get sick.
• 46:05
  Speaker 0: so it's a whole holistic approach to improving community development.
• 46:09
  Speaker 0: And we also feel that that side of the village health and conservation teamwork is highly scalable.
• 46:14
  Speaker 0: And that's why I think the National One Health Platform is one to scale this up in other districts around Uganda.
• 46:23
  Speaker 0: And it also brings in the concept of family planning as well.
• 46:26
  Speaker 0: That's something else that we're tracking.
• 46:28
  Speaker 0: Are people actually have, are they meeting their needs for family planning?
• 46:31
  Speaker 0: Do they have an unmet need for contraception?
• 46:33
  Speaker 0: And we try and make sure that they get it by linking up with Ministry of Health and all the different partners.
• 46:39
  Speaker 0: to make sure that it happens.
• 46:40
  Speaker 0: So the scalable part is the community health workers and conservation coming together.
• 46:45
  Speaker 0: That's one way that we've been able to see some of those models scaling up.
• 46:49
  Speaker 0: And you can add so many other things onto it as well.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: So that brings out something else that besides the idea of using international conventions and laws to kind of scale up is somehow connect to something that people really care about, right?
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: Health people care about.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: And that's also perhaps an avenue to scale.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: So let me go to some of the questions that have come up, if I may.
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: And I'll just, also in the interest of time, I'll direct them to each of you.
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: You mentioned, Fernando, the question of the importance of water and using water and wetlands.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: What the role of flying rivers?
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: could do to create connectivity and solve local landscape issues and water security issues?
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: Well, this is a strong connection between the forestation and the flying rivers.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: If you are losing the forest, you have less water in the atmosphere and these flying rivers are weak.
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: So we need more trees.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: We need to recover the cover of the forest in order to have very healthy flying rivers and very healthy as well the river.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: We have in the Amazon actually two rivers.
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: We have the Amazon itself, six thousand five hundred kilometers.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: We have the flying rivers and we have the Hamza.
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: The Hamza is underwater and on the ground river four kilometers down from the river.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: So the Amazon is putting twenty percent of the fresh water of the planet.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: So basically in order to keep these flying rivers we need to recover the forest and to keep the forest in the Amazon.
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Gladys, what economic alternatives exist for diversification beyond tourism for local economic development?
• 48:46
  Speaker 0: That's a great question because everyone sees tourism as the main way to support conservation efforts in a win-win.
• 48:54
  Speaker 0: We have found that areas where there's conflict, it's very difficult for tourism to thrive.
• 48:59
  Speaker 0: You know, there's too much liability to bring tourists.
• 49:02
  Speaker 0: you know, get them kidnapped and all that, which unfortunately has happened in some of these countries in the Congo basin.
• 49:10
  Speaker 0: But other areas like, you know, agribusiness, you know, everywhere people are subsistence farmers.
• 49:15
  Speaker 0: Some of them also grow crops, you know, cash crops like coffee or tea.
• 49:20
  Speaker 0: and just supporting these farmers and but making sure you have markets for them, maybe locally, but more importantly, internationally.
• 49:29
  Speaker 0: That's where the international community can come in to help.
• 49:32
  Speaker 0: save these rainforests.
• 49:34
  Speaker 0: Because once people have an economic livelihood, there's a way that you can get coffee out of the country.
• 49:40
  Speaker 0: You know, branded people buy it, they pay more for it because they know that it's helping to protect forests.
• 49:45
  Speaker 0: It's traceable, it's helping people who'd otherwise be destroying the lands of the earth.
• 49:50
  Speaker 0: And those are the kind of ways that you can keep things going in spite of the fact that tourism can't really happen because it's not safe enough.
• 49:58
  Speaker 0: So we have a gorilla conservation coffee, which I'm glad you enjoyed drinking.
• 50:02
  Speaker 0: And with Gorilla Conservation Coffee, that's exactly what we're doing.
• 50:05
  Speaker 0: We give farmers a good price for good coffee, specialty coffee, which a lot of these places actually can grow very good coffee.
• 50:12
  Speaker 0: I know we've had people in Cameroon wanting to do the same thing.
• 50:15
  Speaker 0: You know, Congo, there's coffee growing also around the forest.
• 50:20
  Speaker 0: And this then is branded into something that people are willing to pay a lot of money for.
• 50:25
  Speaker 0: And then in our case, a donation from everybody sold.
• 50:30
  Speaker 0: It also supports community health and guerrilla conservation efforts, guerrilla health and conservation efforts around in the same communities.
• 50:38
  Speaker 0: So such social enterprises or initiatives can go beyond tourism.
• 50:45
  Speaker 0: You definitely need something that is not so dependent on tourism.
• 50:48
  Speaker 0: And the COVID-nineteenth pandemic showed us all that you can't just rely on tourism because it disappeared overnight.
• 50:53
  Speaker 0: But at least even during the pandemic, the fact that you could get coffee to the UK.
• 50:57
  Speaker 0: Because UK allowed the coffee, allowed imports, meant that some people were still earning a living during the pandemic and didn't have to enter the forest to poach, collect firewood and just survive on the forest.
• 51:09
  Speaker 0: Whereas all the other community members who only depended on tourism were finding were struggling and poaching went up for some area, for people who had no other alternative.
• 51:18
  Speaker 0: So yeah, anything else, whether it's honey, coffee, anything that people are already doing, but they just need access to markets.
• 51:26
  Speaker 0: And I think that's when you bring the private sector to provide access to markets and investors that can really help.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: That's for you, Fernando.
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: Is the TFFF, the Tropical Forest Forever Fund, I don't know whether you know about it.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: It was launched in Belém with a lot of fanfare.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: It seems a very innovative approach.
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: I think it's very important, very relevant.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: And one of the, we know that the strategy is that at least twenty percent of all the funding For the Tropical Forest Forever Fund, it goes straight to the indigenous.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: But we have the support of fifty-three different countries to create and to launch this.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: But we need to look the different ways to implement that.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: That's the key point.
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: I feel sometimes that at the COP people say we need three hundred billions of dollars to make actions.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: But we need to understand what actions.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: What are these actions?
• 52:28
  Speaker 2: The public wants to know and who built this action from the top down or the bottom up approach.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: So we need to build on this before only ask for money.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: But I think this tropical forest forever fund is a good step and we need more investment and commitment for all the countries in the planet to secure the forests in the Amazon, Congo and the southeast of Asia.
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: Thank you.
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: Well, there's just one topic I'd like to drill in a little more before we close the seminar.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: We've used the word a lot, governance, rule of law.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Gladys, you said it's a foundation, and it seems to come across all the time as a foundation.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Let's just dive a little deeper into that.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: I always have learned in my life that bringing rule of law is tough, and this idea of bringing it is even crazy because it needs to be built.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: I think very much is my experience bottom up where people are, but then there is this issue of scale.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: And when we talk about rule of law, I always use a very simple definition, inclusive ways of reaching decisions and making rules, inclusive ways to implement those rules and enforce them, and dispute settlement.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: And in most cases, I think, especially in those cases of the Amazon, dispute settlement at scale.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: And that's really hard to build and really hard to do.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: And at the moment, we also see that funding for rule of law and justice is going down.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: It's really hard to get funding for justice and rule of law.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: And connected to the rule of law, of course, is an element which I call the monopoly of violence.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: The state needs to have the monopoly of violence.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: Not everybody should be allowed to walk around with a gun and shoot people and do stuff.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: It needs to be organized in some shape or form.
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: So these are two very difficult things.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: And I just wonder if you have any wisdom to share with us on how this big complex question of rule of law, this big complex issue of security and the monopoly of violence, how you navigate that and how you deal with that and whether you know of any best practices to integrate that into the approach.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Gladys, maybe start with you.
• 55:04
  Speaker 0: Yeah, that's kind of a very complicated situation, but I know that some of my colleagues, we haven't personally done it, but some of our partners have had to, you know, when they've had to do work in the Congo, some of them have had to talk to the rebels.
• 55:20
  Speaker 0: because actually, The rebels, for some reason, sometimes they value wildlife if they know they can make money out of it.
• 55:27
  Speaker 0: So they will protect it if they know it can help them.
• 55:30
  Speaker 0: So there's been situations where people have had to talk to rebels and have some kind of ceasefire so they're able to get supplies to the rangers or communities they're working with to protect the wildlife.
• 55:42
  Speaker 0: But finding ways that you can also start to talk to some of these people and see if they can become partners in that.
• 55:49
  Speaker 0: I don't know whether it's the best practice.
• 55:51
  Speaker 0: But it gets certain things done in certain ways.
• 55:55
  Speaker 0: It definitely does.
• 55:56
  Speaker 0: But just getting everybody to realize that it doesn't matter which side of your own, whether you're for government or for your rebel or something, we all need to have conservation going.
• 56:09
  Speaker 0: Climate shouldn't change.
• 56:11
  Speaker 0: We need these forests.
• 56:13
  Speaker 0: It's a benefit to all of us.
• 56:15
  Speaker 0: And so sometimes it can result in peace building, actually, when people have a common ground, which is OK.
• 56:21
  Speaker 0: It doesn't matter what side we're on.
• 56:22
  Speaker 0: We still want the forest around.
• 56:24
  Speaker 0: We still want a stable climate.
• 56:26
  Speaker 0: We still want, this is helpful for all of us, for our health, for our well-being, for food security and all of that.
• 56:32
  Speaker 0: So it's, I guess, thinking out of the box in how you can just keep going in spite of what's going on.
• 56:40
  Speaker 0: And sometimes you can bring about some peace building.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: It is indeed one of the challenging areas.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: Fernando, what have you experienced in this whole issue of rule of law and security?
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: I think, for example, we have the Supreme Court of Colombia declared the Amazon as a subject of right.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: And that is very good because it creates a framework for the Amazon.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: And also, we are talking here about the human rights, the rights, for example, of the indigenous people.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: So the main point is how to put this in place in an area with a lot of conflicts.
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: So it is not so easy.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: We have the frame and we need to work on this.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: A good example of this is happening just last week when Gaia Foundation here in Colombia helped indigenous community at least eight indigenous territories to become acknowledged and recognized for the government.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: political map of Colombia is going to change in the next two months because we need to include the indigenous territory.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: So far we have like states inside Colombia, but now everybody will need to acknowledge and recognize the indigenous territories.
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: And this is a very important step because we go from the paper to the action.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: that really is happening and we need to create a legal framework for the indigenous to take over the law in their territories and to work and be an example for other countries.
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: So this is the step we need to close, from the sentence or from the law to the practice.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: And this is very challenging.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: especially in these areas with a lot of organized crime and illegal activity.
• 58:40
  Speaker 1: A complex picture emerges.
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: But I'm starting to see the following picture, and maybe we can use that to draw some conclusions from our conversation.
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: One thing that you seem to be saying is start where it works.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: Start in areas where something is moving.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: You use the word hotspot, Fernando, which I really like, but start in places where it works and then build from there.
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Secondly, I think that's probably the strongest word that comes out of this conversation is integrate, integrate, integrate, integrate, integrate.
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, that seems to be... the key thing.
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: We say that in a world that is divided into states, that is divided into disciplines, that is divided into ethnicities, that is divided into levels of government.
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, we have division everywhere, but somehow we need to integrate.
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: We need to integrate disciplines.
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: We need to integrate economic earning.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Somehow, a serious business model needs to emerge for a country.
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: We need to integrate the state level versus the communities or the bottom up top down.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: You mentioned the demography, how important that is.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: Of course, you need to integrate the biodiversity knowledge and research that is being done.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Health, you mentioned.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: Education, you mentioned.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Climate change knowledge.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: And then last one, the huge complex area of rule of law.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: law enforcement, creating legal certainty, slowly building something of a monopoly of violence, building, I think, a scaled capacity to settle disputes at scale because there will be disputes where many people live.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Does that kind of capture what we're saying?
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Gladys, maybe start with you.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 0: Yes, it really captures all that we're saying.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 0: Integrate, integrate, integrate is very necessary.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 0: Meeting people, meeting people's needs in order to, and a lot of these conflict comes about because people's needs are not being met.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 0: So then they turn into rebels.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 0: And so, you know, meeting people's needs where they are.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 0: I think all of that, as you mentioned, it's come across very clearly.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 0: I think we've generally touched everything, but people are not doing well, but the vast is not going to do well.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 0: And we need different ways in order to address this.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 0: And this includes the indigenous people.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 0: Their rights have to be met.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 0: There's always that indigenous people, they're very good at living in the forests, they're very good at having a very, very harmonious coexistence in these big forests in the Congo and the Amazon.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 0: But then, if their rights are not taken care of, then things can go really wrong.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 0: So, yeah, community well-being has to go hand in hand with successful biodiversity and climate action.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: That's a really great addition, Gladys.
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: People's needs at the center.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: And that's something we've also learned in our work on rule of law and justice.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: You need to put people's needs at the center, and then it works.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: Fernando, what would you say to these concluding words?
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: I think that we need a coordinate global push to deliver the scale and speed of change we need in the next ten years.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: That is very important and I think the civil movement is the only one that are going to put and to pressure the governments to act as they need to do.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: So the civil movement is so important here.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: We need that the elections for every candidate to go for the presidents of any country to put in the main agenda these topics, what they are going to do, what is the next government going to do, and we need the civil society to shape these governments.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: We need to act and put people that really are committed with this.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: It's the only way.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: And we built... where things are working, as you said.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: And we need to start local and then go to national and regional to create this movement.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: You just started two important things.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: One is the ten-year horizon.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: We need to fix it in the next ten years and the importance of the civil movement.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: I would add one thing, and then I will hand over to you, Alan.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: I would add one thing which the two of you absolutely personify.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: And that is you need integrative leaders.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: You need leaders who are able at different levels to connect all these different areas, because without that kind of leadership, it isn't going to work either.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: I would like to thank both of you for this extremely enlightening conversation.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: I think we highlighted a lot.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: We're still left with a big question.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I hope the audience enjoyed it, picked up a few good things.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: The importance is integration, integration, integration.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: I'm now over to you, Alan.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: And I won't try to integrate any more than that, but I want to thank you, Sam, for the conversation.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: Gladys Fernando as well.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And to both of you, Gladys and Fernando.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: We can't have these conversations about science and environment without having conversations about justice and rule of law.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: And one of the things I want us to do in the Talberg Foundation is continue to try to do that, but also to put our shoulders, our collective shoulders behind action in both the Amazon and Congo River Basin.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: And as you three are all part of an initiative, we have underway to try to do exactly that.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: So let's see what we can do over the next year, because frankly, I don't think we have ten years.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: Again, thank you very much.