Hey guys, how you doing? It's Andy Elliott. I'm here today with my man Rob. Rob is out of Pennsylvania and Rob has got a secret that he's gonna tell you how he crushed it last month He's only been in the business for a month and a half and I'm gonna tell you He has a little secret that I've never really heard of. I've I've seen guys do it but Rob has figured out how to dominate it and I want Rob to teach it to you guys because I'm gonna tell you Rob How many cars did you sell last month and how many did you sell from doing this little trick that you have figured out? Now we did 18 last month and from this trick we got 13 of them Awesome. So you took an extra 13 car deals in the month of February By doing what you're about to tell us is that right? Yes, sir. I love it. Okay. Well Rob introduce yourself. You've been in insurance for 17 years You just started and then why don't you take it from there and tell us what you did and how how every every one of Our sales people in this country can do the same thing that you did and they should do it Sure. Hey, thanks for having me on first of all, I appreciate it But you know the biggest thing about sales of any kind seeing people and closing people and I knew Basically what I needed to find to be successful was to get in front of as many people as I could and I wanted to Find a way to do that without putting out a ton of money So I kind of found this niche that works for anyone Whether you have any money or not to get more people in front of you basically what I do is I throw a whole bunch of lines out There with hooks on them on Facebook So I find a local dealership, you know, that's running some type of ad whether it's you know credit forgiveness or you know Whatever it may be and then I just kind of scroll down to all of their comments And then I instant message each one of those people so basically you throw out some kind of hook, right? Like hey, I'm Rob from Luther Ford. You know, I specialize in getting people bought that may have been turned down before I'd love to help you You know, we do the best we can on trades and also on payment and in rate How can I help you today and then just send a ton of those out if there's 400 comments Now you got to make sure you don't get put in Facebook jail So you want to do like 20 an hour and just send that hook out to every one of those people Tell me what that means You said put in Facebook jail. You're saying you don't want to cause an issue with Facebook So you probably send about 20 Messages an hour. Is that right? Right?  Right? And then you have a generic response that you say to them Hey, you know reach out to me because I'm actually 10 times better than what they're doing. Is that right? Yeah, and the other thing is to you have to realize like these people are getting tons of messages in their inbox Anyway, so a lot of times they may think they're talking to the people that they put that ad You know that they commented to their ad don't even know that you're someone else because they probably hit, you know Three or four different dealerships that they're looking at So you sold 13 cars off it it cost you zero money Yeah, and all you did is have to basically troll the dealerships probably within a 20 30 mile radius, right? Right they're close to you, you know They're gonna be visiting these people anyways, right if something works out and then obviously they wouldn't have responded to that place If they weren't close anyways, so you're finding close customers They're actually people that are in the market because they wouldn't have responded to the ad and commented if they weren't interested, right? Right and the other thing about them too is people like to do as much as they can online So I actually get those folks whenever they hit me up I actually get them to put in a credit app and start working on like hey Let's see what you get qualified for that'll make things a lot easier.  So it's real simple.  My name's Rob. I'm like 10 times better at all these things Why don't you reach out to me for a quick second? I got something for you Exactly when they do most of the time like if it was a special finance app like that one You would say look I can get two seconds of information and I can put everything together So you're just driving down here picking up your car Correct. That's what they want to do. You're taking care of it that way. They love you you get the lead It doesn't cost you anything and that a way you're not standing outside all day Like we talked about earlier like most salespeople just waiting on the next customer Yep, and you can filter through so many more that way, you know, like I might have you'll have the low-hanging fruit Right that are gonna hit you up right away You know, you might about a 50 or 60 that you send maybe you have like 10 to hit you up like real fast And then the other ones you may have to send them like a teaser every day That's basically what I do So every day I go through that whole list of people that I have messaged and I send them another line You know basically just to stay at the top of their inbox and then as the month goes through I mean, I just delivered one on Friday that I sent the original message to them like February 3rd And they came in and picked up the car. So I love it. So You would recommend Finding the local dealerships in the salespeople's area, right? Yeah, and then going to Facebook and searching for them. Is that right? Yeah, just going to Google first and put car dealerships close to me, right? And then it's gonna bring up a list and then just hit them one by one on Facebook and see who's running ads And then I just do that about every week go back through that list see who's next Well, especially on a rainy day, right? I mean look if your day is loaded up, you know It's either we have a customer or we're looking for one, right?  Yeah, and the beauty of it is today You know on your phone, you can be walking through the lot doing it, you know what I mean? Like it's just a constant just constantly rolling trolling through them. I Love it, dude. And when he says trolling I envision guys I'm vision Rob trolling on a boat with a hundred of lines in the water And then the guy next door to him sitting there on the dock with one pole in the water Expecting to bring home a whole stringer full of fish Rob's going to bring home a whole stringer full of fish because if one line isn't hitting the next line is hitting, right? Sometimes they all hit it once and some days you they don't hit at all But when you got the poles in the water, there's always activity, right? Well, and that's like the one day I delivered for you know, and then the next day Maybe I do one and then maybe I do two the next day, but you know, it's just constant. It's just constantly hitting them You know, Rob, let's talk about this real quick. This is something I think that's really important I don't want anybody to miss you've been selling cars for a month and a half right a month and a half and you delivered 18 last month in 13 of those you generated are on your own with zero money Can anybody imagine what Rob's gonna be doing a year from now? He's dangerous man, and you're just getting it figured out. So Number one a I really appreciate you sharing this with everybody. I think this is very generous of you guys We're Rob told me this I had I had to ask him I said can we share this because most guys are stingy and they're like nah, let's not tell nobody Rob is 37. How many kids you got six? That's why I gotta work so much man. I got six kids. They like to eat a lot. So I can't be timid. I Love it. No, listen man. I'm telling you at 37 six kids. He's grinding it out He's been an insurance sales for 17 years just got in the automotive industry I learned something new every single day never stop training Rob. You're gonna go so far Thank you for sharing this with everybody and I'm telling you everything that you gave everybody today the one Percenters that actually want to make the two three four five hundred thousand a year They're gonna take this little bit of information and the next time they have downtime They're gonna hammer it now look it doesn't always work a hundred percent of the time But you have to do it a hundred percent of the time. Am I right correct? Yeah, so there's days that you send out messages, and you don't get any responses What would you tell somebody that does this for a couple days? Nothing works in a couple days keep hammering it. Yeah, just keep dumping it into the funnel, right? It's a funnel in a conveyor belt you gotta dump the people in the funnel to get them out the door in the car and conveyor belt Yeah, I love it man. Dude.  It's like this endorphin that's in them. It's like being and they're like, oh my gosh Who is that? Oh, it's Rob down the street. I don't know who Rob is, but he's saying he's got great rates How did Rob know about me? And guess what? There you go.  Is that right? Right. Yeah, because just because they don't answer you I guess that's probably a good thing to throw out there just because somebody the answers you doesn't answer you It doesn't mean there are no means there are no right now, right? But right it might just be there off Facebook for three or four days, you know, maybe they don't check it all the time So it takes some time to get back and see that message So if they get a bunch of other messages while they're off and if you're not Constantly putting something out there to them. You're gonna be way down on their list So you just want to throw something out to keep kind of scroll to the top That is great because I'm milking all this out of you.  Literally, that's it.  What are they what's he talking about? That is great, dude. So Rob says do you want me to to send you your check or not? He's a smart guy man. He's a businessman. All right, Rob I appreciate you sharing everything with everybody. I hope you have a blessed day I'm very glad that you shared this. There's tons of people that are gonna love this if you guys like what Rob had to say Thumbs up the video put a comment below and You're welcome to reach out to Rob. He's in Pennsylvania. He'd love to help you. Thank you Rob I appreciate your time brother and Guys have a blessed day


The Bemidji Police Department is asking the community to be alert after multiple reports of suspicious interactions with a man and a woman in the area. Lakeland News reporter Cheryl Moore has details on the case and tells us what to look for. A post going around on social media has everyone in the Bemidji area on high alert. The first instance of suspicious activity happened Sunday night in the parking lot of a local business. Since then, police say there have been at least two other instances that happened in other Bemidji businesses. What had happened was a couple, a male and a female, approached a single female in the parking lot and asked her if she was interested in some modeling opportunities out of state. Not much is known about the couple. They reportedly leave each scene immediately after their target declines the offer. If you try to call the number on the social media posts, you'll find it has been disconnected. Police have also reported that this is not only happening in Bemidji. It's an older couple, I suppose, estimated to be in the mid-fifties, and they have been seen, we have verified that they have been seen in the St. Louis County area, as well Duluth area, and as well as Cloquet in the Carlton County area. Police say if you're approached by someone who's maybe acting a little suspicious or just isn't sitting well with you, the best thing you can do is get to a safe spot and report it as soon as possible. It is important to take proper personal safety precautions. You know, stand lit places in the parking lot, know where your car is, try to travel in groups or pairs as much as possible, keep your phone handy. When it comes to identifying potential threats, officials say some red flags are people promising you lots of money that you can make really quickly. Also remember, a threat can be anyone. Things that are really kind of suspicious to look out for, you know, one if you're being followed, that's one thing like we've recently seen, but another thing is like someone who really is just asking a lot of personal information about you. The Bemidji Police Department believes they have a lead on who the suspicious couple is. Still, they want the public to be on alert. Well, I should be looking out for a 2008 Chevrolet Tahoe. It's beige in color and it's got Idaho plates on it and they are KS&K 664960. Reporting in Bemidji, Shraamor, Lakeland News. If anyone has any information regarding the two individuals or the location of the car, they're asked to call the Bemidji Police Department. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.


Policy learning from Red Plus for forest restoration and zero deforestation initiatives and also other forest related initiatives. Welcome to this rather cozy setting and room. I think we should leave the door probably open for sure. We have some oxygen for the next hour and hour.  Thanks for coming. And also welcome to the panelists, whom I will introduce in a second. Just to introduce myself, my name is Tim Christoffers and I work for UN Environment. I coordinate our activities on forests and climate change. That includes the UN Red Program. And I'm pleased to be moderating this event today, which hopes to enable you, the audience, to draw the connection or connect the dots between all these different forest related activities. So anybody who knows all of the following acronyms will receive a prize. Red Plus, NAPAS, NAMAS, NDCs, NBsubs, FLEC, TFA 2020, NYDF, FORM Challenge and SDG 15. I'm not going to explain any of those, but just to assure you they all are central to forests and forests are central to these initiatives. But there are quite a lot of those and it can be quite confusing, the jungle of forest initiatives to make sense of all that. And this event is about the compass, the compass that we need to navigate those forest initiatives and learn from the successes we've had in some of them, particularly in Red Plus, which is in many ways one of the older ones and one of the bigger ones of those forest-related initiatives. And how we can translate those lessons into other policy areas and also into other sectors that impact our forests. We are looking forward to hearing from our panel, but we also look forward to hearing from all of you. At the end of the brief introduction from the panel we'll have a round of questions and answers. And I hope that collectively we can come up with the answer of how all these forest-related initiatives come together towards the sustainable development goals. And that prompts me to introduce our first speaker. I will introduce the speakers as we go through the different interventions from our panelists. Our first speaker is Peter Holmgren, a Rector General of the Center for International Forestry Research. And our host here, if you will, as C4 is the main organizer of the Global Landscapes Forum. Peter, we're very happy to have you with us. You know the world of Red Plus and the different forest initiatives like few others. And we hope that you will give us the C4 team. I'd like to wish you all a very welcome to this year's edition of the Global Landscapes Forum, GLF. That was actually an acronym you missed. What I would like to do is a very brief introduction. I don't think I will make all those connections. That was what I would keep to learn, actually, to get an update on this. First to say that in our previous life, when I worked for FBO, I was part of the team that founded the UN Red Program together with colleagues from the UNEF, now the UNEF, and also UNDP. That was eight years ago. And a lot of things have, of course, happened over those eight years, including the evolution of things is something we're going to hear about today. In my previous role, one of the C4's roles have been through the years, and since before I came on board on C4, to do a global comparative study on Red Plus initiatives and implementation in a number of countries. And this has, of course, hopefully helped to bring some experiences and some knowledge to the tables and bring some of that evolution to happen. And we're interested to hear from others in the room just how that has been moving. I'd like to mention that Christopher Marchus on the front row is currently leading the Climate Change Research at C4. So for any more people, please check with Chris. I'd also like to then briefly connect to the Sustainable Development Goals, as I mentioned, because part of the evolution as I see it is that Red, as well as the Climate Agenda overall, has a great opportunity in connecting with the World Development Agenda. I think this is a discussion we've had since the inception of Red. And I'll probably, towards the end of the spectrum, where I wanted to integrate the Red actions and turn around, instead of talking about Red with co-benefits, perhaps we should talk about Sustainable Development with Climate as a co-benefit. I think that will probably enrich the discussion, if we take that perspective. It doesn't really change the objectives, it doesn't change the ambition with Red, but it might change how we organize the implementation of it. And that also connects to my final point, which is that I'm really happy that we're having the discussions about Red and forest related initiatives within the Landscapes Forum, because the connections between forestry, forest conservation, agriculture, other land uses, the livelihoods of billions of people in the World's Landscapes is really crucial and a very, very big part of the solutions we need. So I'm grateful for this session. I look forward to hearing more from the other panelists and from everybody else in the group. And I'll leave it at that, and I hope that that was a sufficient introduction to the topic. Thank you very much Peter, and indeed thanks for setting the scene. We'll come back to both, I think all of those points that you mentioned, including seeing our action on forest and Red Plus as, or seeing carbon as the co-benefit rather than as the main and one and only benefit. I think that's a view that is now more and more persistent in many of those countries. And one of those countries that has had that view for a long time and early on and has been a champion of the forest agenda long before Red Plus is Costa Rica. So of course we all, I think, have benefited from the experience. And we're very pleased to have Minister Gutierrez here, Edgar Gutierrez Espelata as the Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica. He's also the President of the UN Environment Assembly for the time. And we're very happy to have you here, Minister. And please, if you could share with us the lessons from Costa Rica on how to stay the strategic course on forests. Thank you very much. Is this necessary? Yes, I'm sorry. All right, hello everybody, good morning. Yes indeed, Costa Rica, as you said, has been very much into the way of thinking Sustainable development of course is part of our own history. This is 1949 where most of our social and environmental policies started to be in place. And of course we have been learning in the process. It has been that easy. We have had to test different ways of doing things and sometimes we fail. But that's the way of creating knowledge. And that's the way of creating public policies that really goes along with the main objectives that have been set by the people. In our case, the strategic framework has been placed on two main things. One is the National Development Plan. The different National Development Plan, now we have a National Development Plan that goes from 2015 to 2018. And therefore the other part of that is the National Forest Development Plan that goes from 2011 to 2010. But the main thing of basically most of the National Development Plan and the National Forest Development Plan is that it always keeps on saying that we have to maintain and increase the sustain in a sustained manner the forest cover by evaluation of forest and forest ecosystems and land services, ensuring legal certainty, land tenure and the right of owners to use private property and to ensure essential woods and services for the quality of life of people. These are the five main aspects that have been embraced by all the policies that we have been able to put in place. And for that, I have to tell you that the key political and economic factors that promote the recovery of forest recovery in Costa Rica are these ones that you have in the screen. The financial mechanism, very important. We had experience with different types of financial mechanism. One, we put it in place in 1979 to 1986. And it was a sort of deduction from the grand times that we provided to producers in forest reflectivity. The second one goes from 1981 to 1995 and it was called the Forest Bond Certificate. It was another incentive. And the third one from 1991 to 2017, still on, is the Payment for Environmental Services. The other important aspect on these factors is the enabling legal framework. And for that, we have had three forestry laws in the last 15 years and every time we try to improve these acts. And in the last one, in the actual law that we have, the forestry law is where we introduce a very important and crucial aspect that will prohibit the change of land use. Since 1995 in Costa Rica, the change of land use is prohibited by law. And that has helped us to recover forests because once, for example, a pasture land is abandoned and second growths start coming up, the owner is not going to be able to cut the second growth in order for getting back the pasture land, but he has to maintain that. But then, because of that, then we had to provide means for the land owner to keep the forest. And that's why we say we are going to pay you for the environmental services provided. This is the PSE skin. And the third component in these political and economic factors are the environmental development strategies. And for that, that is something that has been in place in a way, you know, in a way through a, at the beginning, a silo sort of conception. I was saying that the environmental development strategies that we have taken at the beginning were viewed as a silos, the agricultural sector working in one part, the forestry sector working in the other part. But it has been part of the history of our rural development in Costa Rica. And we had agroforestry developments since 2001, 2010, and then 2011-2020 with the new National Forestry Plan. The old component, a very important and important as well, is the protected areas. In 1970, we established the first protected area in Costa Rica. And since then we have been working in that line. And now, nowadays, we have 23% of our territory protected and about 23% of the land in Costa Rica has to do, even private in private land has to do with what we call biological corridors. And the other component in the academic training, very important one, before 1990s, most of the forestry work was done by agronomists. We didn't have foresters in Costa Rica. And since the middle of the 90s, we started graduating in public universities, foresters, that has helped a lot in the process of the recuperation of the forest land. And the other component is the institutional capacity. In 1986, Costa Rica created the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Minds. Before Rio, 1992. Later on, this ministry was turning to the Ministry of Environment and Energy, what is today. And since then, it has been leading with the old related activities with forestry and environment as a whole. All these are viewed in this graph that you have in the screen. Well, you are not able to read that. But the important thing is that this portion here shows the amount of investments that were provided by the different economic instruments that were put in place. Here it's very interesting, these are incentives. Then drops to 95 because we have a new law. And from the new law on, we have been working with the payment of environmental services. And by now, we already reached the same amount of money invested in forestry activities. And here it shows how everything that from the policy perspective, every time that a decision was taken, this reflected, of course, in the way of the impact in the Land Court. What's next one? That is Costa Rica in 1960. We had 53%, no, sorry, that one. That is Costa Rica, the first one in 1960, 53% of forest cover. And in 1987, 26% of forest cover. You see here all these sections. And this part of here, basically, most of our deforestation was due to the expansion of the air culture frontier. And mainly, a big percentage of that because of the expansion of the forest cover. Yeah, the pasture here. And this is, yeah, go ahead. Is this on? Yeah, no. And this is now that we have been able to recover to 52% of the territory so we're coming from 27% to 52% in nowadays. And that is now being shown in the screen. Of course, all this has to do with the impact in climate change. Here we are coming from a high rate of deforestation so we have a lot of emissions. We started recuperating. And by now, we are about in this stage here where we have been able to actually reduce quite a bit the, of course, because of deforestation we have been able to reduce the emissions from deforestation. And we're still working on that. I mean, this is part of our main challenges. And talking about challenges, we decided to put ourselves a big challenge. And it was to rehabilitate one million hectares of degraded or overused land by 2030. That's a big challenge. You know, when you come from 26%, 27% of forest cover up, everything you do is going to be added very easily. But once you are reaching the potential, it's very difficult to add just 1%. So we still decided to put this challenge before us and we're working towards that. And the consolidation of the efforts to improve the sustainability of agriculture and forestry sectors goes to the livestock nama, the mitigation program with livestock. We already have it in place. We are working with that. Thanks to the support of UK and Germany. It's very, very interesting how the livestock people is very much interested in reducing mitigation by improving the way of doing business in their own farms. The coffee nama, we are working with coffee growers to reduce emissions as well by implementing different sort of strategies in the plantation and different sort of strategies in benefiting the coffee. The red-plated strategy, of course, is in place, a lot of expectations around it. And low-carbon-carol development strategies is a very important thing that we are working with the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock towards reducing emissions from from robins, that are robins and that sort of things, you know, by improving the diet of the cattle. The reforestation program, but basically what I wanted to promise the last one, productive and inclusive rural landscapes. We have thought that this is the key. Since 1995, we have been working in rehabilitating the greater lands. And I say, we, because I started the program as part of the implementation of the of the Convention on the Certification of the Greater Lands in Costa Rica. And we've had already quite a bit of experience in rehabilitating the greater lands in different watersheds. And learning from that, we have decided, the Minister of Agriculture and myself, that we have to put in place a very strong national program in Costa Rica that will productive and inclusive rural landscape. That's the way of going according to our beliefs in Costa Rica for the years to come. And of course, through that, we need the engagement of different sectors. It's not just public. It has to do with the engagement of co-operatives, the engagement of private owners, the engagement of enterprises, et cetera. I mean, this is a very important and crucial thing. And this is the way we think that we could desegregate this great national effort in recuperating one million hectares. We had pasture lands. We have to work with pasture lands, improving it by planting more trees in them and enriching them with a different sort of vegetation cover. Permanent crops, secondary growth forests, private old growth forests, managing in a better way. So at the end of the day, by 2030, we hope to have recovered one million hectares of degraded land. And the good part of this story is that this strategy has been developed just by the Ministry of Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture. We are working together on this. This is a map that we did on the rehabilitation opportunities that we have. We already have it very well mapped and the strategy goes along. And the other thing is that the benefits of all this eco-tourism, you know, someone could ask why we, Costa Rica, Costa Ricans are getting quite a bit of a tourist that comes to our country and not goes to Nicaragua or Salvador or to San Bernardo, Las Alches, but Honduras, you know. I mean, most of us would have some sort of sense of diversity. Why they come to Costa Rica? Why you come to Costa Rica? Why you would come to Costa Rica? Well, you know, the difference, I am here, I am very strongly on this, the difference is that people that come to Costa Rica come to a place where we, the locals, know our nature and we can explain that to the visitors. And that is why tourists in Costa Rica spend more than 10 days in the country. Instead of the overall average of 5 days visiting one place, they stay more than 10 days in our country, travels a lot because they want to know everything and they are able to actually learn because people actually explain that. That is something that we have learned and that is something that we have shared with communities. Most of our infrastructure for visitors are in the communities, are small hotels, you know, rural hotels and that sort of thing. You know, we do have, you know, these chain hotels and that sort of thing but they have charter that come with it. But this is a very important co-benefit that we are actually learning from. And the other one is water, of course. Water is a very important thing. 70% of our energy production comes from water and 50% comes from eothermal. Those are in nearby volcanoes but these are part of the recuperation of the land as well. So we have a levium water and what this levium is producing it goes back to our photo shoot program. So with this, what I want to show you is that a national effort once has a very, very well devised horizon. With very clear objectives of sustainable development as it was saying. With very clear objective that the benefit of all this at the end of the day has to be the people. The ones that benefit the most. But then we have to think broadly and we have to think not in silos but thinking from the strategic perspective by developing the land as it has to be in the way of being the landscape and the museum of that landscape and not just one particular issue. Thanks very much. Thank you very much Minister Gojira for those inspiring words. I think now all we have to do is replicate that in about 60 countries and then we'll be all set. I think we are starting to do in fact exactly that trying to learn from each other and replicate lessons learned in other countries. Sorry, let me just switch to the microphone here. Thank you. We are doing exactly that trying to learn from the countries that have found the success formula. How you create productive resilient landscapes for people, food and nature and Costa Rica is one example where that has worked. We have the UNRAT program the South South Learning Experience between Costa Rica and Cote d'Ivoire where I think the situation is now very similar to what it was in Costa Rica about 30 years ago and Cote d'Ivoire will look hopefully like Costa Rica in 20 years or less from now because... Today I always sign an agreement a cooperative agreement. Exactly. So very good and we're happy to have those two countries next to each other to showcase also how we can learn from each other because one thing we believe was done right in the very beginning in Red Plus was to put the countries firmly in the driver's seat. The countries have to be the ones who coordinate all these international NGOs and IGOs and all these people coming in with good ideas. The countries have to be the ones to develop their national vision and to ensure policy coherence. I think policy coherence, the public-private partnership as the minister mentioned are very important and we're looking forward to now hearing from Marcel. Marcel is the coordinator of Cote d'Ivoire's National Climate Change Program and the Executive Secretary of the Red Plus with very clear strategies guidance set by the government and determination and persistence one also has to recognize that these things take time. If we want to restore our forests, turn the deforestation curve and the forest degradation curve around which is a huge challenge in many countries it takes time, persistence and policy coherence it also takes some money and I think this is one issue you mentioned the payment for existing services and the amounts raised and I think it's also important to note that as far as I am informed all or almost all of that funding came from Costa Rica's domestic resources. This was not an internationally funded program, it was Costa Rica's domestic resources from a fuel tax and other sources that funded this remarkable turnaround. I think this is also important to note in the context of being here at the climate conventions where we talk a lot about the 10 billion dollars that are now in the green climate fund but that is actually very little money compared to a 75 trillion dollar world economy and we have to be very smart in investing that public money that is limited to really change the way things are done at the national level. So by now I hope everybody has a headset and we can launch into Marcel's presentation please. We know that we are in the Côte d'Ivoire but we don't know yet the Côte d'Ivoire because it's a country from the West Africa and every time you want a chocolate or a piece of chocolate it's the first country produced in the world of cacao about 40% of the world's production. Unfortunately this production of cacao is made for the preservation of forests. So we will present a little of the contest of the Côte d'Ivoire where we are the champions at the level of the production of cacao champions also from Africa of football and champions also of deforestation In this three cases we see a little of the evolution of deforestation and I remember that the production of cacao in the 40s of the country and after this production moved to the east of the country only 60% of the national production comes from the southwest of the Côte d'Ivoire just at the last step which was still very well preserved. So it's a country with strong agricultural potential with 40 agricultural speculations and unfortunately this agriculture is made for deforestation and so since 2011 it has decided to reverse this trend to advise the agriculture with the preservation of forests. So the country decided to do with it more a political question of national development and inter-ministerial inter-ministerial has been engaged since 2012 which has contributed to a policy of zero deforestation agriculture. At the level of deforestation of course we have the agriculture the production of coal the mining exploitation and the extension of infrastructure. With our new strategy and more each factor of deforestation is addressed by a strategic axis. Also at the level of indirect deforestation we have also addressed strategic axes. I just remember that the day we signed a memorandum with Costa Rica a mission thanks to the UNURAD is gone to Costa Rica to go and see what is going on there. We really have been amazed and this new policy of deforestation kill zero deforestation will be done around a national plan of the PSE system of energy strategy the management of the territory and the financial security and protection of the infrastructure. So we have been at the national level with the convention signature with the different agricultural fields and above all the implications of the ministry of development for the preservation of climate change to be well integrated in the national plan. And the RELPUS is part of our initiatives that have been presented last year. This is the RELPUS in Côte d'Ivoire where there is a good case of permanent consultation that has been put in place. This was not the case before we had a policy at school different from the forest policy different from the mining policy etc. So there is a lot to progress but many challenges are still to be raised in the integration of the forest in the national plan and the national strategy RELPUS and the tradition of the political will at the national level I remind you that the president announced in 2014 the objective of time at the beginning of the zero deforestation yesterday we visited the Côte d'Ivoire we also reminded him of national funding for the preservation of the forest and here are the results of an excellent study that we came to finalize with the support of UNRED the girls thank you Adeline Daniella and Danielle who accompany us for this study so the study showed that the funding is insufficient and is poorly aligned at the level of the RELPUS national parties with our national partners at the level of the main results in 2015 only 28 million dollars were invested in the fight against deforestation this is largely insufficient and in 2015 140 million dollars are funding essentially agricultural but poorly aligned and the study showed that to achieve our objective 20% of the territory covered by deforestation in 2030 we need about 249 million dollars per year you see that's a lot and this funding is sufficient for the RELPUS for climate change and we also noted that several sectors which are more or less related are insufficient to finance the farming of the territory the national planning the sustainable energy and so on so it will not only increase the funding in favor of the forest but also well oriented and we have an opportunity with the RELPUS and with this study to revert all our national planning for as long as we can and follow the example of Costa Rica so I like these stairs we are on a path and we think that a lot of results have been achieved the RELPUS continues to take these steps so we will have to reinforce the funding around the sector of the forest and its sector I remind you that we have a historical context in the Costa Rica because we also had a political crisis we had two presidents two or three months ago and we hope that with this mission and this MOU with the support of the Costa Rica technicians we can adapt the PSU adapt the law of land use in the future our goals thank you very much Marcel thank you very much and the challenges that Costa Rica has overcome are really very similar to the ones that Kotevo is facing now so we are happy to support that South-South collaboration in any way we can also in the future the private sector engagement is something that I think we will come back to both in our next intervention but also later in the discussion we saw the figures you presented Marcel but I heard yesterday that one of the big chocolate companies that I won't name here but one of the biggest ones that deals in chocolate they spend 40 million dollars a year alone on certifying their supply chain so these sums of money that are invested and moved around in the private sector are often orders of magnitude larger than the public funds so forming the right public private partnerships is of course also key and that is a good segue to our next speaker who is well known to many of us Aida Greenberry is the head of sustainability in fact the managing director of sustainability and stakeholder engagement at Asia partner and Aida has also been very active from the beginning in this first small but now quite large cluster of companies that have committed to zero deforestation supply chains and have made that commitment public amongst others in the New York declaration on forest that was one of the acronyms I mentioned in the beginning and we are very happy to hear now from Aida how the public policy progress and learning can also help the private sector in overcoming their challenges which have to do with monitoring and stakeholder engagement Aida over to you please thank you for some of you you don't know who we are Asia partner group we are possibly one of the largest integrated forestry and partner group in the world we are basically splitting our operation in Indonesia and in Jakarta and Shanghai and turnover is about $1,000,000 per year and capacity of and paper and paper and packaging is about 20 million tons a year as well we are not a conservation group we are basically our paper company my story is very similar to the story from the before we used to also build our plantation through mostly deforestation as well our supply chain in Indonesia and China right now is basically amounting about 3 million hectares of forest 2.6 million hectares is being managed by our suppliers in our supply chain in Indonesia and there were so many hundreds and thousands of hectares of forest has been converted to develop this public plantation in the past the journey started in February 2013 when my company launched a zero deforestation policy of course the aim is to stop deforestation in our supply chain zero deforestation policy that we have is basically consisting of the protection of my conservation values the identification and protection of high carbon stock implementation of free and prior consent and also the resolutions of conflicts across the supply chain so that has to be done in one package under zero deforestation policy so we thought that halting deforestation back then was as simple as launching a policy and turning off chainsaw and bulldozers and deforestation would stop from because when we ask independent auditor to have a look at how we are doing with our zero deforestation policy we found that deforestation is still happening the deforestation is not being done by our suppliers but there are other actors who are continuing with encroachment so then go back to what Peter mentioned in the beginning how is this policy red plus and everything how it is involved how zero deforestation is involved is quite interesting as well we found that implementing the policy in just one or two concessions or new supplies and it is definitely not enough to have a look at other aspects outside our landscape outside our concessions so right now basically I want to go back to red plus a little bit but red plus I mean the objective with our zero deforestation policy and red plus is basically the same but then how we will be implementing a zero deforestation and also supporting red plus is quite interesting because right now I believe and I think a lot of people share with what I believe is that red plus cannot stand alone but it is good because there are so many different initiatives out there such as the one proposed and also implemented by private sectors who can complement the implementation of red plus which is the landscape approach the programs with the community and everything else all of these elements can complement red plus to make sure that red plus will succeed sooner than later go back to the public private partnership is also quite interesting my role as representative of the private sectors in zero deforestation is definitely we would like to play more important role in driving zero deforestation moving forward and one thing that we can do in making red plus more successful in halting deforestation in the landscape especially in leveraging our role in providing resources the resources can be human resources because we have human resources trained human resources on the ground across our supply chain or financial resources financial resources for example like Tim said before that the private sectors are trying to address deforestation by infesting in their own supply chain in the landscape we try to do the same since 2015 we have been infesting we have been allocating a $12 million investment in the landscape outside our supply chain and the investment we have made for the deforestation in our own supply chain is more than $200 million since 2012 so it's quite a massive investment but there are several objectives that we are doing with our investment one which we invest to reduce the risk of our own investment commercial investment also business investment for example with our own plantation if we do not invest in the landscape we are operating our investment in plantation will face a lot of risks from encroachment risk from forest fire pest and disease and everything else investment in landscape is of course it's good for the environment it's also in the person but at the same time so good for this thing as well and a second objective is that nobody can save the landscape nobody can stop deforestation in the landscape alone so the second objective of our investment is basically to provide the seed funding or providing the de-risking elements for other investors to come in and for fun in saving the landscape for deforestation and deforestation thank you thank you very much Eida we will shortly come to questions from you the audience and then towards the very end I will give the floor to our colleague Renata who is our youth representative here at this event who will summarize but before we come to questions from you and please already think about what you can contribute to this discussion about grad plus policy learning I would like to give the floor to the man who is responsible for many of the acronyms I mentioned in the beginning because Norway has of course been a champion in moving this entire field forward both within the UNSCCC and also in fora like the global landscapes forum across the private sector and Andreas Tweiteras is the deputy director of the Norwegian government's international climate and forest initiative or NICFI and we are looking forward to hearing from Andreas how Norway sees all of these different strands and initiatives they fund and others fund on forests come together in a strategic direction Thank you. Thanks Tim and apologies to everyone for all the abbreviations I will try not to use them in this intervention I must say that it is extremely good to be here and to be able to listen to the presentations from two countries with very different backgrounds that are now sharing experiences and from private companies that are working towards the same goals of reducing the frustration this means that the work that many of us started 8 years 10 years ago has now moved from being an idea into a lot of practical communities and of course Costa Rica has been frontrunner has been doing rent a lot before someone invented that abbreviation and there is a lot to learn from what you have done I wanted to mention that I did my master's degree in Costa Rica so a lot of my reason for seeking here is from my experiences doing that The Norwegian Climate and Forest Initiative was launched in 2008 and I will be very clear in stating that the primary objective of that decision by our European Parliament was climate and forest the government saw that reducing the frustration was one of the things that had to be done in order to make the climate change I think the evidence base was strong then but it has only grown stronger in the years after that it's also becoming clearer and clearer then in addition to reducing emissions we are completely depending upon the ability of restoring our ecosystem to capture CO2 from the atmosphere if we are going to achieve carbon neutrality by the middle of December so the focus on landscapes the focus on forests is still in its early stages and we are still just stretching the surface compared to what needs to be done if we are to use this potential for what it's worth and for what we need Norway is committed to this in the normal and our government pledged in Paris one year ago that it will continue the climate forest initiative until 30 at least so we are in this for the normal we are as Tim indicated we are finding a lot of different activities and it might be different to see how they all fit together but I can assure you they do it is linked to a lot of what we have but through these impressions the challenge is so complex we need to mobilize such a wide variety of actors and processes we need not only to focus on the carbon we need to focus equally much on social development economic development in New York as we've seen one of the key challenges or lessons that we learned very early was that the things that we tend to see as drivers of new frustration are recognized as drivers of growth in many countries and they are so if we and recognizing that national governments are the key players and I completely agree they need to be key you can't reduce the frustration that governments are supposed to do to regulate and enforce regulations if governments don't do that we can achieve results within projects but not sustainable results all the time in large areas so governments are key the key challenge upon all of us is to be able to answer the question why should governments bother why should governments bother to take up the bad against countries from the economic and political forces that in many countries are behind deep frustration we need to be able to demonstrate that reducing deep frustration will provide the same economic potential the same number of jobs and the same welfare for the population and in that perspective just paying for reduced decisions is not enough so we have spent a lot of resources in demonstrating that good land use decisions make economic sense even without carbon payments the importance of forest for water supply for agricultural for health in countries where forest burning has been a health issue in some major wise land use even without carbon payments carbon payments is a useful tradition of course countries like Costa Rica that realized this a long time ago and have tested in many ways to conserve forests and make economic benefits from that are extremely important as places where other countries can live so Costa Rica, Brazil, Mexico and enormously important role in the years ahead and we are very happy to work with the UNRED program for example to stimulate that exchange of experience of course the role of the private sector is fundamental to create the same welfare and in new ways unless we make use of the innovation force of the private sector so companies that have committed to the New York Federation are of course extremely important factors in this as well but I would like to emphasize that the private sector itself can't solve this and we need to see our private partnerships where governments do what they should do which is to regulate and enforce in ways that create the playing field where in the private sector can operate without imposing more deforestation some of the companies that have committed to deforestation free supply chains are very openly stating that we can be here guys for a while unless governments regulate and make the areas where we stand off are much accessible to other companies there are limits to how long we can see that we are losing areas and markets to companies that do not apply to the same standards as us so this has to be private sector and government working we are exploring ways in which there are more innovative approaches in the private sector for example deforestation free supply chains production in landscapes where small holders are a lot of the commercial chains we are exploring the use of risk mitigation mechanisms we only do so in landscapes or jurisdictions where there is a willingness from the public sector to regulate that is absolutely critical to make this work I'm not going to be able to focus on everything to do but I want to raise one other aspect where we invest a lot that is in transparency transparency is key in Norway we have these terrible creatures called trolls they do very bad things but if they are moved into the sunlight they disappear and I must say there is a lot of things going on in the ones forests caused by trolls and we have to get the sunlight above them so initiatives that improve transparency on what is going on in the ones forests are extremely important I think we have witnessed some very positive developments over the last few years for example the global forest bush which is making close to real-time satellite data available in the forest to cover accessible to everyone everywhere from their mobile phones or computers that is only the beginning I think we will see a flourishment of technologies that makes us able to trace products from the source to the supermarket so that companies, consumers can hold every part of the supply chain accountable and NGOs can hold their government accountable you see an increasing use of these technologies by indigenous peoples groups monitoring their territories using GPS for example and satellite monitoring so transparency is key we are also investing significantly in enabling the participation of stakeholders indigenous peoples groups social and environmental NGOs have to be part of the discussions on how landscapes and forests are managed on the national level but also on the global level and that has also improved rapidly and intensely over the last eight years for those who follow the comments on language negotiations you will see that the presence of the civil society is much more important than it was in the past it might be one of the reasons why it has advanced in many areas I think I'll stop there if I can work with you there is much more to say thank you very much Andreas and it's certainly exciting times to be working for and with and in the interests of forests and the people who depend on them thank you to Norway also for that long term perspective if you want to understand how Norwegians Google a little film called Think Like a Mountain which is actually quite interesting about the Peruvian exchange student to Norway and how he learned about different ways of seeing the forests I think we all benefited from that long term perspective that Norway is taking and indeed forests are between 20 and 30% of solving the climate crisis depending on how successful we will be and 50% of solving the biodiversity crisis so we have to we have to increase our action on forests and that's now increasingly recognized also over there in the blue zone and in the SDGs Sustainable Development Goals and elsewhere so indeed very exciting times very many things going on how we can better link them is the topic of this session and now we're looking forward to hearing from you the audience questions, short comments if you have any I would like to ask if you have any questions briefly introduce yourself and then ask your question if you can in tweet length and I'll also ask the panel to respond in tweet length if they can there are a lot of people here tweeting and if you manage to stay within that 140 characters there's a lot of chances that you'll get a much bigger audience than is in this room and we've seen recently that Twitter can be quite a powerful tool for policy change so we have a few people who will who might want to start I'll take 4 questions or 5 first and then we'll get the floor back to the panel no ladies to start with for so far all gentlemen we'll make an exception then we'll start over here, please be very brief and introduce yourself I'm Bernhard Sturmüder I'm working for YARA a private sector company based in Norway but we're also the global leader in the fertilizer industry we specialize in providing a knowledge-driven approach to serving the markets working with farmers to help them balance their sustainable land use the environmental concerns but also importantly the return on investment for the farmers so we have the pleasure of operating both in the Ivory Coast Market and the Costa Rica Market and I'm very impressed by the holistic approach that you are taking to your markets and how you see the agricultural sector as being vital to protect your forest as well so my question goes primarily to Ivory Coast but probably with some learning from Costa Rica we know that in Ivory Coast the cocoa trees are aging so there's a need to reinvest into replanting cocoa trees to keep on productivity but there's a financing gap because for the relatively small cocoa farmers to reinvest into their cocoa production they will be unprofitable for a period of time before the production is restored back to high levels again so I'm just curious to learn how you work with private sector and the cocoa farmers and with investors to support the farmer profitability in this transition place thank you very much and we have another question over there my name is Florian, my circumfinance in motion in Frankfurt we are an impact asset manager and currently raising a sustainable forest refund with the support of the EIB that targets niche markets in Africa and in America we've seen in Germany that the course of our climate action has often been influenced by lobby groups sometimes positively, sometimes negatively I mean for example the solar rooftop insulators were very vehement about defending their tariff and making sure that it's a continuing effort for probably longer than it should have been but inversely the car industry of course is known to everybody as being a very strong lobbyist on the other side things to Costa Rica and Ivory Coast very impressed of course by the things that you've managed to do how were lobby groups in your country making a difference did you do did you have to make concessions did you find ways to tie them in and making them as has been the case the success of your efforts thank you very much, Florian thank you Dennis Garrity I'm from the Agroforestry Center and Chair of the Evergreen Agriculture Partnership and I was particularly interested at the Minister Gutierrez on your recent engagement in stimulating agroforestry systems as part of the overall forestry program including Civil Pastry particularly in light of the new data that's just come about that indicates that tree cover and agricultural lands across the world is increasing rapidly and also carbon stocks increasing in agricultural land and so your comments on how you are proceeding to stimulate agroforestry systems could be another new a new development in your sharing with other countries on how they could in fact follow on to to ramp up the tree cover on agricultural land through agroforestry I really appreciate your comments ok let's have one more in this round on this side anybody we overlooked over here I'm from the Rainforest Service the question from Mr Gutierrez just on the economics of the PES the payment for agroforestry services what is how much is actually paid to the landowners on how they work terms of per hectare and what would be the percentage of their income over a year great thank you very much let's pause there and give the panel a chance to answer the questions were almost all directed to the two country representatives and I think it's very good because as we said the countries are in the driving seat here it's also encouraging to see that some of the questions came from private sector colleagues I remember five years ago if we had an event like this you would have to drag the private sector into an event with the exception of some early movers but now I think we have much better participation of private sector colleagues and again that's very encouraging let me start by giving the floor to Costa Rica, Mr Gutierrez and then Marcel and then anybody else from the panel might want to add yes thank you thank you let's start by the lobby groups what can I say about that I don't know the way it has been in Costa Rica is that actually I wouldn't say that we don't have such lobby groups such constituted lobby groups we don't have interest groups that relates to the activity lobbyists is someone that is being paid for doing the job of someone else and it's like in a way we have to work with communities we have to learn the lesson that we have to work with cooperatives with corporates like for example the coffee growers one important actually in Costa Rica landscape is coffee and coffee growers are very important play a very important role in promoting everything and we have learned much about coffee growers how they do business and how they have improved their own plantations they have incorporated trees into the plantations and this and that you know in Costa Rica as you know we have shaded coffee plantations and that has filled a lot with the carbon as well so he has been an interest of the government and I would say of any sign political sign to incorporate the inputs from the different sectors within the policy making and that has been nowadays more strongly supported and it is part already of a different policy for example the biodiversity law practically incorporates the stakeholder opinion sector and it has been easy to negotiate for example with the private sector then say well we don't want the communities to be saying how much water I am allowed to use and this and that you know and it has been a struggle but it is going and it is accepted by most of the congress people but then for that I say that as such lobbyist we don't have that sort of things but we do work with different stakeholders of course agroforestry is a very important component it is crucial we learn I mean it is very interesting because I mean allow me just for more minutes we were doing the writings during the 70s and 80s learning our lessons and then neoliberals came to our governments and then they destroyed it they brought the short side kind of activities we wanted to sell everything from the public side in order to have more income and then everything that comes along with neoliberals so we lost about 10 to 15 years of midterm and long term planning and establishing common horizons that we developed during the previous years so we are coming back to that and during that moment agroforestry was at in the discussion of our rural agenda and now it's happening hopefully it's going to stay there and it's and I'm pretty sure it's going to stay because we have learned the lesson that we cannot talk about production if we don't talk about conservation these are two two phases of the same coin we cannot work on production and increasing productivity of our lands if we do not conserve the major parts of the landscape that have to do with that with that issue increasing productivity so agroforestry is important we are incorporating more trees in pasture lands we are incorporating more trees in monocultures and we are incorporating trees everywhere that we can and going back to the new question BSE yes of course not enough for forest management for forest protection we pay by hectare for agroforestry we pay by tree the many trees you plant the more money you get but it's not enough what it represents 80% of land owners in Costa Rica owns 20 or less hectares we have small owners small land owners composition of our landscape that would be not enough using BSE scheme for a land owner of 20 hectares to have that under forestation as it sounds nowadays we are developing a new economic instrument so that we can turn this poor farmer at this moment in time to become a forester or a forester by providing incentives or providing the means so that they can live out of that activity and that is one of the things that we are trying to develop with the help of some people alright thank you very much we are running short on time we start about 5 minutes late so we will eat 5 minutes into the coffee break because I want to make sure we all have the chance to wrap up let me combine the statements now with a quick closing statement from everybody we will first give Marcel the floor very brief and then every one of the panelists and then Venata will dig out a few nuggets from the entire discussion Marcel please thank you the part of the cacao plantation in Côte d'Ivoire is mainly because of deforestation because the small farmers since the plantation is old they no longer produce it we are looking for new land to make new plantations and unfortunately it is in the forests that these new plantations are going to be made so the idea is the Ministry of Environment and Agriculture to renovate the cacao plantation which is almost 30 to 40 years old but it needs to be renovated in a progressive way this phase of transition will be completed by financial hesitations which will be in the present but also the big forestry by using the plantations to bring the alternative income to the farmers waiting for the new plantations of the new cacao plantation and a new essence has been tested put in place by the research institutes in Côte d'Ivoire with a production that was completed around 300 years ago and this new essence is compatible with the Association of Forestry Ags it is said that this new element has already been started since 2017 thank you Marcel and now let's hear hopefully tweet length or maybe a few tweets statements from each of the panelists to close please I will connect to the tweet comment because I will pick up on the interest groups interest groups are very very empowered these days and therefore I want to raise the voice of research and science being the head of a research organization and so we that do research with the two science have a much greater responsibility these days and the last forum is an example of this we want to be will be science based going forward secondly I think it is also important for research and science to be humble and realize that all those interest groups or whoever they are whichever side they are on whatever they argue they actually come up with a lot of questions that need to be answered by research and science and not just by those tweets by interest groups thank you very much Peter thank you for teaching all of us how to connect the science policy and practice gap and that is well loaded thank you Aida just a few things to make sure that we can support Red Plus in the future one is we need to remember to embrace the community in our efforts in addressing zero devastation second we need to leverage the role of government sectors with their wealth of resources human resources and also technology and also financial and third, jurisdictional and landscape approach are key to align strategy with non-stakeholders and to address leakage so those are my comments thank you and last word from Norway before we head over to Renata yes, thank you I think we have seen from this discussion that the work that is being undertaken to achieve Red Plus reduced emissions from the first generation is done in ways that will contribute to many more sustainable goals than just the one that's focused on climate forest the work that is being undertaken is empowering populations it's contributing to economic growth in developing countries so the impact of our work goes far beyond just the beauty of red as a payment mechanism for emission emissions is that it stimulates these global and developmental impacts when the emission reductions are produced but when someone on top of that pays for the emission reductions that payment is reinvested into activities that can multiply I think the Amazon fund in Brazil is the best existing example and it's an example that many should look to because we are paying Brazil for emission reductions so we're paying for the climate result but the money is destined to development activities in the Amazon region of Brazil creating jobs, creating participation making indigenous peoples even to guard their territories and much more so I think this is a mechanism that is still a bit poorly understood but it's it's remodeled Thank you Thank you very much Andreas and now the unendable task falls to Renata Lozano who is from the Mexican civil society organization Reforestalmos Mexico where she coordinates the landscape restoration initiative in alliance with World Resource Institute and World Conservation Union and we have not really heard much about the restoration movement and the bond challenge but all of us I think have reached in that as one of the initiatives that in a way is a spin off of all this additional activity on forests Renata is one of the many youth activists who are making the global landscape home such a special event because we're connecting here also to the youth the next generation of leaders in our field and Renata over to you to the key things that you took from this event to date Thank you very much Tim I will try to be really brief but there are a lot of main key points from this session but first of all I would say that Koteboa and Costa Rica really provide such great lessons and coming from a developing country myself I know that the greatest challenge is always to integrate the ministry's agriculture, mining, environment and of course forestry into the national planning so that's really the most important challenge to take over and of course all of the progress that you've made that both countries have made along the way in these past decades open the path for new restoration initiatives and certainly for Sierra Lea first-generation initiatives as well another great point that you mentioned was south to south cooperation how we could have more knowledge transfer among developing countries but also from developing countries as well in order to really provide the incentives for government and private sector as Aida mentioned as well the private sector is also providing many many lessons into the table the key point here will be it's not only investing in the supply chains it's not only investing in the landscape direct intervention that the company has but also in a broader view where you could really integrate all indirect actors that are playing a key role in the landscape and transparency I agree is really the most important challenge when you have all these initiatives playing at the landscape level and you want to sort of provide the government and also the private sector are really very coherent addressing an approach for the landscape in order to have indicators impact evaporation properly addressed for the government and the investors as well and for these we also have great instruments such as you mentioned Global Forest Watch and it's really a matter of integrating those in order to achieve our success and I think that would be all. Thank you very much Thank you Renato that was a very impressive overview and I think it was a very very rich learning event there would of course be much more to say please take the advantage of the coffee break to speak with the panelists to give them all a big round of applause before just a five second advertisement if you wonder what all these acronyms are and what they mean and if you ever wanted to find out what all this red plus hype is about there's something online called the red plus academy 12 modules everything from finance to safeguards it's the most comprehensive free online course on red plus for you or any of your colleagues who might be interested thank you very much again to all of you and thanks to the audience for coming thank you for taking questions thank you have a good day


AppalachianWireless.com is here to make your life easier. Sign in or create a self-care account to pay bills, view usage, or check contract dates. You can also apply for paperless billing and auto pay to save up to $5 per phone per month on post-paid plans. It's self-care from Appalachian Wireless. Johnson County Community and Economic Development in Johnson County Solid Waste are holding an art contest for all Johnson County K-12 students. The students may submit entries in either of two categories. We have the traditional two-dimensional art, which would be painting, drawing, charcoal, anything like that, or they can also submit a digital entry. The goal of the art contest is to encourage awareness and environmental cleanliness in the community. Students are encouraged to use any medium they like, including photography and TikTok. We know that keeping our communities clean, that that's very important. And we we hope that through this contest that will cause students and their parents and their families to think more about anti-littering and keeping Johnson County beautiful. The theme of the art contest is earth, respect it, and protect it, and there will be a cash prize for the winner. The deadline for the contest is March 17th. For more information, you can visit the Johnson County Community and Economic Development Facebook page. For Mountain Top News, I'm Kelsea Dean.