Good morning ladies and gentlemen. My name is Hassan Hakimian. I'm the director of the London Middle East Institute here at SOAS, your host over the next day and a half and also co-convener with Dr. Alanwood Alsharekh of this timely conference. We don't often gather together on a Friday morning late in May to talk about population and demography, but there's no denying that this is a very good time. I'm going to give you a very short welcome and introduction and then move on because we have a very interesting and packed program and I'm sure everybody's here to hear the speakers first and foremost. I want to indulge for a few minutes just to say a few things about SOAS and the Institute. For those of you especially who may be new and who may not know too much about who we are and what we do. That'll be very brief and then a little bit about the theme of the conference and why this particular topic at this particular point in time. For those of you who are new to SOAS, you may think that life here is rather slow. I just want to remind that this is actually at the peak of the examination time. Our students are in exam halls and our fellow academics are busy marking papers. So we've taken a bit of a time out in organizing this conference at this particular point in time on this particular topic. As you might know, SOAS is one of the leading institutions for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East and the London Middle East Institute. Here represents the community of scholars and specialist academics about 80, 85 of them here in SOAS who specialize on this region, broadly defined including North Africa, the Arab countries, Iran, Turkey, of course, and and and this is something that we have been doing for quite a long time. We cover, as is very much the character of SOAS, we cover a very broad range of subjects and disciplines, mainly in the area of social sciences, humanities, languages and culture. You might be interested to know that here at SOAS we take pride and excel in the teaching of some 65 plus languages of Asian Africa.  It's quite amazing. Some of these are of course very small and specialized classes. I'm told the three most popular languages are Chinese, Japanese and Arabic. This counts for something like about more than half of the student numbers doing languages here. At the Institute where I have had the pleasure and the responsibility of directing over the last four years, we've been very busy as you can imagine. Anybody who knows anything about the Middle East over the last three, four years, this has been very very interesting times, very challenging times and a time when not only specialist interest in the region has been heightened, but also the public. The public really are thirsty for knowledge and understanding of the region. And this is another aspect of what we do, not just focusing on academic scholarly work like conferences, publications and so on, but also outreach. I can assure you many many times in the year. This wonderful hall is full, not quite like this morning yet, but quite full in sessions that we organize around themes relating to various aspects and dimensions of the Middle East. In fact three years ago we took advantage of the rather excellent concentration of academic expertise in Iranian studies at Tsoas to set up a specialist sub-center within the Institute called Center for Iranian Studies. That was 2010 and that was followed up by another specialist center, rather unique Center for Palestine studies, which was done in 2012. In your conference pack, there is a wonderful magazine. At least I think it's a wonderful magazine. It's called Middle East in London. This is a flagship publication of our Institute. It's published by monthly. The last issue in your folder is in fact the next issue, which is for the next month, which is for June, July. And as it happens, it's on the subject of oil, past, present, future. And oil, along with population and demographies, of course, the other side of a very very pertinent coin when it comes to the Middle East and the GCC. I want to thank, I want to briefly say thank you to a number of people before I say something about the topic of the conference and then hand over to my colleague who will introduce our eminent keynote speaker. Conferences of this nature are impossible without foresight, without commitment, without organization and planning, and of course without support. I'm grateful to Dr. Khaled Al Khalifa from Bahrain College, from University College of Bahrain for his generous sponsorship of this conference. You will have an opportunity to hear him later this afternoon. He would be on one of the panels. So a big thank you for Dr. Khaled. My colleague Al Anoud, who's a co-convener, who will chair the next session, the idea of a conference on the demography of GCC originally was hers and without her commitment, without her dedication and relentless effort, we wouldn't be here today. So thank you, Al Anoud. It's virtually impossible to list everybody who supported us. So I beg forgiveness if I have missed out one or two of you, but of course thanks also go to the speakers and presenters who have taken time off to be here with us, to our keynote speaker, Professor Coleman. Everybody's busy committing yourselves to be here, as we know very well, has very high opportunity cost. And especially for those of you who have had to travel, our consolation is that I hope you very much will enjoy the deliberations. You'll find this a very productive conference. You'll have an opportunity to network with others. And for those of you who come from the region of the consolation of taking some time off from temperatures in the mid-40s, welcome to London. We don't plan the weather, but I think, you know, this is this is quite nice. So I hope you agree. Now, let me say a few words about population and demography and then move on. Fascination, if not concerned with population and demographic issues, runs very deep in social sciences, amongst economists, sociologists, demographers, anthropologists, and the list goes on. I suppose ever since the Malthusian law of iron law of population, there's been concern about the ability of Mother Earth to support an ever-growing tendency for humankind to multiply its numbers through procreation and so on. Although we were lucky to escape the worst doomsday scenario put forward by Malthus, nevertheless concerns about population growth have been a running theme through various decades and have surfaced in different ways and formats concerned about population explosion, concern about a huge resources devoted to population control. It's very rarely a country which doesn't have some policy of some sort on population, whether it's to do with population growth acceleration or deceleration. And as with most social science themes, there is far from unanimity on the importance of population growth. With what may seem to be a problem for some is at the same time an opportunity to others. Population seen from one perspective may be another mouth to feed, another stomach to fill, especially in the context of poorer countries, but population as we have also been reminded by Nobel laureate Professor Simon Kuznetz also means more brains, more skills, more hands, more artists, more inventors. So whichever perspective you look at, population and demography is very much at the heart of social change. I suppose I am preaching to a converted audience and I don't need to elaborate too much on this. This is the theme of the conference. But we also know that it wasn't just growth rate or the tempo of population that has exercised academic, scholarly concern and policy debates. The composition of population, the makeup, whether in terms of age, the youth dimension, you know, the gender composition or the foreign migrant, local, indigenous composition has also come under scrutiny. Those of us who took part in European elections only last week, we were reminded again of the potency of this very aspect, the composition of population and the mix between local, indigenous and migrant communities. So it's not just the GCC, it's not just the Middle East where this subject is going to be with us for quite some time, but also here in Europe, we experience it, we live with the consequences. So allow me to say that this is a very timely conference here at our institute. It is a first. We've never hosted a conference focused on demography and population change. The focus is on social and economic aspects. I mean, this subject is huge. We could well have had a conference on the political dimensions, but that's not really what we are here. The social and economic implications are both important and important enough to keep us very, very busy and engaged, and I hope this will be an excellent opportunity not only to hear from experts, but also have an opportunity to participate in the discussions, put your questions to the panel, and overall, as I said, enjoy this conference. If you're back to Soaz, as many of you are familiar faces, welcome back. And if it's your first time to Soaz, a very special welcome. Just to finish, one or two housekeeping announcements. I know in this day and age very few of us survive without being online. If you are wondering about Wi-Fi, I'm told that there is a BT zone wireless. You'll have to go online to BT open zone, and then you'll be guided from there how to spend your money and how to be live online if that is what you are impatient to do. And otherwise, our chairs have been asked to try and keep to time. As far as possible. It's inevitable that on a gray Friday morning like this in London, we start a few minutes late. We expect bigger numbers and people will come throughout. So again, thank you very much for your interest and for your presence and a big welcome. I hand over to Alan. Thank you very much. It's a great privilege to be here. We invited to speak at Soaz for the first time in my life, and particularly in this extremely elegant lecture theatre. I have to confess that while I was delighted to be asked to address this meeting by Aranur Al-Sharek some time ago, nonetheless, I was slightly alarmed because I must confess to you that my expertise insofar as I have any relates to the populations of the developed world and not of the Arab world or of the Gulf. Nonetheless, it appears that some of the phenomena which are taking place in the Western world may possibly be of interest to members of this audience, even though they have not yet arrived in the Arab States and may never do so. I speak of this the so-called second demographic transition of which more and on. I'm not at all suggesting that developments of this kind, which happen in the West, automatically happen everywhere else. That'll be very arrogant, but it might do. If it does, it will be a very radical alteration and change an upset in social arrangements and also in the economy. It will benefit one half of the population. The other half of the population will see their privileges and their power and their traditional authority very considerably eroded. Let me perhaps proceed by spending some time talking about what happens in the West. I hope you will not find this boringly irrelevant, but I've got to explain what happens there and why this second demographic transition so-called is deemed to be so important before I can go on to rather briefly see how far it may or may not have manifested itself outside Europe in various other parts of the world. I'll talk about the Far East. I'll talk about the Gulf States. To begin at the beginning, the first demographic transition has to be explained before the second one. Now, many of you in this audience will know very well what the first demographic transition is all about. Perhaps some of you do not, so perhaps I should very briefly say what's going on. Essentially the first demographic transition is the technical name for a tremendous improvement in human welfare, which has proceeded over the last 200 years, involving essentially the partial conquest of death and the assumption of control over the birth rate, such that the old-fashioned regime, whereby populations experienced perhaps six, seven, eight children ever born, of whom most would die, with an expectation of life at birth of 35 years at best, has been, this has been transformed in almost all the countries of the world, into a position where women have not more than two children on average in many countries, and where expectation of life at birth among women of Europe at the moment, for example, is over 80, and where the pundits believe that a newborn baby born now has a 50-50 chance of living to be aged 100. Now, because the death rate almost invariably falls before the birth rate, I will not go into the reasons why, I'm sure you can imagine why, there is an intervening period of quite rapid population growth, whereby the population previously hardly growing at all may increase four, five, six, seven, eight times in the course of the century. Then in due course, the birth rate and death rate come into balance again, much more lower, much more acceptable. Levels and population growth fizzles out and may even lead to population decline. These events began in the developed world, in England and elsewhere, about 1750 or so, very roughly speaking, and in various other parts of the world for various times in the 20th century. A handful of countries still have not begun this. In North West Africa, there are still countries like Niger, where the ladies of Niger say that they want to have about seven babies and where they do have seven babies. This generates rapid population growth of a kind, the consequences of which I really cannot imagine. This is believed to be something which will eventually cover the entire world, the advantages of smaller family size, of living longer, of deferring death to old age, are so huge that they will be irresistible. We shall see. This is the shape of this transition. On the left at the top, you see this so-called total fertility rate. It is merely an indicator of how many babies a woman is likely to have, going from five, six or seven, in the top left-hand corner of the graph, down to about two. Then we have an improvement in life expectancy from 20 or 30 up to 70 or 80. And because the two things are out of kilter, we have a growth rate, which goes up to about 3% per year at its peak that is doubling every 22 or 23 years, which means the population will double four times in a century at that rate. And of course, the population size therefore hugely increases before, eventually, we believe, stabilizing or possibly falling. This is what the Gulf States are doing in this context. This is the Gulf States population of Kuwait, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman from 1950 to 2065, set so that all of them have a population of 100 in the year 2015. That's where they're all so close together. Of course, they're all in reality, very different. And you can see that they all follow roughly this logistic curve, made complicated, of course, by the huge influx of migration, which is a unique characteristic of the Gulf States. But you can see that the projection by the United Nations expects that while the population of Kuwait is still merrily increasing rapidly, even by 2065, that of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain and Qatar and Oman will stabilize or even be in decline. These are only projections. All projections are always wrong. All matters is how wrong they are. And these are the best that can be done looking forward into the future. Who knows what may change to upset them? What about the second demographic transition? We've had this first one, which is almost entirely beneficial, indeed, necessary for the survival of the human species. The second one is a phenomenon which started becoming apparent in Europe and also in the United States in the 1960s. In the mid-1950s, when I was a little boy, there was a kind of golden age of demography in terms of family life. Divorce ended fewer than one marriage in ten, fewer than four babies out of a thousand were born outside marriage. Cohabitation was very rare. The characteristic of the underclass or of Bohemians and hardly anybody else, everything seemed to be very stable. From the 1960s onwards, all that began to change. Marriage became very much later, having been made earlier in the baby-wound period and became marginalised. Divorce increased rapidly and now in many countries terminates one marriage in two by 25 years of marriage duration. Cohabitation, formerly frowned on, has become normal. The majority of people married before they get married, almost everyone cohabits before they marry for the second time, if they marry for the second time, and increasing numbers of people don't marry at all, but remain cohabiting, or what used to be called the now forbidden antique parlance living in sin. This means that in many, in some countries, up to 60% of children are born outside marriage, not inside marriage. This means, of course, there's a huge diversity in the way that people live their life. Some people marry in the conventional way and have all their children within marriage and don't divorce. Others never marry, have a succession of partners, may have children by those different partners who have a very different experience, of course, than the children brought up in conventional fashion. And the childbearing is postponed. Presponement, more or less everything, of childbearing, of marriage, of death, of course, is the great characteristic of demography in the 20th and 21st century. The fundamental underpinning of this, according to its prophets, Dirk van der Kar and Ron Leistarger, is the growth of prosperity and literacy and secularism in the societies which support these trends, that as they became rich, as they became educated, as religion began to be questioned and to lose its grip, as educated populations started to question the kind of authority they were previously expected to feel for country, for parents, for the views of relatives, people started doing their own thing. And because the countries were rich, because there was a welfare blanket, the welfare costs of having children out of marriage, the welfare costs of being divorced were picked up by the state, party-wide families, but mostly by the state, and without that it would not have been possible for it to develop. Leistarger and van der Kar feel that as populations become richer, as welfare becomes more widespread, as population become more secular and feel originally less important or not important at all, which is characteristic of most societies in Western Europe, and as they become more educated, these patterns will become universal. That is their projection. So far they certainly have not become universal and they may not do so. And part of the point of this talk is to have a very brief look as to whether this might be the case in the Gulf states, which is perhaps the least obvious area where they might prosper. This is the kind of model which Leistarger and van der Kar have in mind. Their initial guru is Abraham Maslow, whose motivation and personality inspired their concepts in this matter. The notion that as human society develops various basic fundamental needs for protection for survival are foremost in simple society, that as these gradually get met by the development of society and its economy, eventually at the top, material needs are more or less guaranteed, safety is more or less guaranteed, and people start doing their own thing. They become more individualistic. They become looking after their own interests because they haven't got to worry about other things of a more pressing kind, which were imperative earlier on in development. To go back to the beginning, this is the old marriage regime in Western Europe in those days for many centuries, back to the 17th century and almost certainly to medieval times. Mean age of marriage for men was about 27, 28. Mean age of marriage for women was about first marriage. This was 25, 26 or so. Quite high proportions, never married at all, rather unusually, in fact, probably uniquely in the world at that time and since. Up to 24 percent or 27 percent, in fact, of women never married at all in their lives in Britain, in Sweden, in parts of Germany, in Denmark and elsewhere. And this remained true right up to the middle of the 20th century. And this is the contrast between the northwest in Europe on the one hand, represented here by Belgium and Sweden and the rest of the world, Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Soviet, Turkey, Japan, India, showing that women, men and women in their forties and after 40 or 50, one's perhaps rather less likely to marry than otherwise would be the case, substantial numbers of men and of women are never married at all in the rest of the world, one or two or three percent are married at all. And this is the case, of course, in the Gulf states. Is that where we're going? This is a graph showing the two curious things, the persistence of late age of marriage right up to the 1950s in England and Wales, the old pattern, a dip in the baby room period in the 1950s and 60s where my cohort, I was born in 1946, was the most heavily married cohort in British history for several hundred years, almost everyone got married. And this is highly unusual. You can see the age of marriage went down since the 60s and 70s. It's been going upwards, mean age of marriage now approaching 30 for men and almost that for women too. And this is absolutely characteristic of Europe. This is a mean age of first marriage for women in groups of European countries, Scandinavia, Southern Europe, Northwest Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, all starting off at different points, but all heading in the same direction, as you can see. And what goes hand in hand with this later and later and later marriage is the fact that fewer and fewer women ever get married at all. Here's some data from the various countries around the 2000, showing in the light blue bar the proportion of women who ever married, who were born in 1935 and the dark blue bar, those who ever married born in 1960 and they, of course, are now 50 years old and all their marriage is done. So these are final figures. And as you can see in Sweden, about 90% of women born in the 1930s will marry at least once in their lives. Of those married in 1960, only about 65%. And the proportion has gone down quite a lot ever since then. You can see there's some variation in that pattern in different European societies, but the trend is always in the same direction, always downwards. Instead, people cohabit. These are data on the proportion of women and men aged in the mid-20s to mid-30s, at the same time around 2000, who have ever cohabited compared with those who are ever married. The pale blue is those who have married at that time. The dark blue is those who are unmarried and who have cohabited. As you can see in Sweden and in Denmark, the majority of people in that age group are cohabiting or were cohabiting rather than married. And this varies quite a lot in different parts of Europe. Quite a lot of variation, as I mentioned. This second demographic transition is not yet a universal pattern by any means. It created diversity. Diversity within Europe, as you see from these different national patterns, diversity within regions, diversity even within each street, you will see you will find some people living a more conventional life in terms of sexual behaviour, in terms of married life and all the rest, and others who follow a much more modern pattern, if I can call it that. And these are the trends of people not marrying in various European countries. This is a crude indicator of the likelihood of getting married. It goes from 1960 to 2010. And as you see, 95% of people married in the 50s and 60s, and then this is dropped down to perhaps about 50 or 60% in those countries by the present day. There's a lot of variation, but the trend is unmistakable. It is also interesting, though, that this is not going to zero. The direction so far is certainly not that marriage is being abolished or that no one gets married. It seems to be stabilizing at a position where maybe 50, 60, 70% marry and the rest will cohabit for the rest of their lives. And of course, cohabitation is much more fragile than marriage. It's between two and four times more likely to break up than a marital relationship with all the consequences for the children concerned. So that's what Europe's doing. And divorce also, as I mentioned, formally very light. Anyone in 10 marriages ending in divorce by 25 years, here we have a selection of countries, some Eastern European, some Western European, an increase in the proportion who are likely to get married going on to 50% by 2011. And that's pretty typical. The crucial point, the one which is really perhaps most marked of all and represents the biggest departure from previous experience in terms of a transgression of previous moral norms, is the proportion of birth outside marriage. Formally very low, as I mentioned, about 4% of births outside marriage in Northwestern Europe in the 1950s. Now, as you see in the Nordic countries, approaching 50%, Nordic countries are the red line. The English-speaking world outside Europe nudging 40%, Western Europe also nudging 40%. Some signs of stabilisation in the Nordic countries, as you see so far, no sign of stabilisation on the others. It keeps on going up and up and up. And I think in Britain, the proportion just exceeded 52%, and it's higher in Wales and Scotland than in England. Can we connect this with people's behaviour and attitudes? We can. Generally speaking, those people who follow the new modes and cast aside the restraints of the past and do their own thing tend to have what most people would call progressive attitudes of tolerance towards other people's behaviour, tolerance towards other kinds of religion, tolerance to those who have no religion, tolerance towards homosexuality, tolerance towards foreigners and ethnic difference. And there are ways of measuring these differences in attitudes which Les Saga and Engelhardt call post-materialism. I think it's a very unhelpful term, but nonetheless, that's what they call it. And you can see here the kind of questionnaire, other simple questionnaire which they hand out in surveys, which attempts to measure whether people are on the progressive wing or the non-progressive wing, whether they are post-materialists in their jargon or materialist. And those who say yes to the blue questions tend to be those of a traditional point of view. Those who say yes to the green questions tend to be a more progressive point of view. And as you can see, the traditionalist questions relate to order, discipline, regularity and things of that kind, economic growth, defense, fighting against crime, whereas those who answer the other questions are much more interested in personal attributes in a friendly society and the environment. You can imagine perhaps that the people who answer the blue questions with a yes are those who read, let's say, the Daily Telegraph and those who answer the green ones are those who read the Guardian or the Independent. You might just be a much simpler way of getting an answer to the question, by the way. This manifests itself in all kinds of interesting things. Ignore all these data, they're just here for my benefit. What this table shows is on a very large-scale survey across Europe, people's behavior in respect to marriage and sex and living arrangements follows their views about how the world works and what is right and what is wrong. So, for example, what these data show is that those who are cohabiting, rather than those who are married of the same age, are only one-third as likely to believe in God. Those who are cohabiting, as opposed to those who are married at the same age, are only one-third as likely to believe in sin, only one-third, only half as likely to pray outside church. They're also much happier about the idea of taking drugs, of cheating the tax man, avoiding fares and curiously fighting with police. This seems to be a habit, which is more common, perhaps on the continent than in England. Curiously enough, when it comes to environmental things, there's no difference. There's no difference in the hostility towards littering the place, making the place untidy, throwing more cigarette, packing it away and so on. No difference in opposition to lying. No difference in opposition to drink driving. So, it's not a complete collapse of morality. It's a focus of morality on what the progressive people think is important, compared with those things that they think is not important. And this is just a graph to show in brief the relationship across countries, all the way from Romania in the bottom left-hand corner to Sweden in the top, between indicators of progressiveness of opinion on the one hand and progressiveness of behavior on the other, by which I mean high levels of divorce, high levels of cavitation, high levels of birth outside marriage. They go hand in hand on an international, as well as a personal basis, with the adoption of progressive or non-progressive attitudes. There are some problems with this concept. It is, first of all, very far from being a universal transition. It's not at all clear that it is not going to be universal as well. You will, I will doubtless learn a great deal in the course of this conference, and one of them may be a much clearer insight as the likelihood of any of these patterns becoming common in the Gulf states where I imagine that they would be regarded with considerable disgust and disquiet. Also, there are some patterns, as we will see, which are happening, which resemble these patterns, which must be explained by a different model, which can't be explained by the development of a prosperous, liberal, peaceful, welfare-oriented society of a liberal-minded people. And there are certainly no indications of it happening yet in the Arab Muslim societies, neither in Muslim societies in their countries of origin, nor among Muslims in Britain. One of the huge exceptions to this second demographic transition trend in Britain and other Muslim populations of immigrant origin in the West is their rejection of much of this behavior. Both outside marriage in Muslim populations in Britain are about 1% compared with about 50% in the non-Muslim population, and that is the case also, I believe, elsewhere in Europe. So the Muslim population so far has said no to this, certainly in Europe and I think everywhere else as well. It isn't, as I mentioned, yet a transition and may not do so, so I will skip over that. Another question about this trend is whether it's sustainable. I mentioned that it rather depends for its flourishing on the provision of a welfare cushion in a rich society. It challenges that welfare cushion by taking quite a lot of it, because in the nature of things, if a woman has a child outside marriage, or two or three children outside marriage, it becomes, in fact, much more difficult for her to be in employment, although not impossible. And therefore she tends to be much more dependent on welfare, and there are indeed perverse incentives in the welfare system in Britain and possibly elsewhere, which induce women to follow that route because the welfare is there, because the housing provision is there, in a way which was not the case in the past and is not the case in other countries. Likewise, when people divorce, this creates three households on average where two existed before. It costs money. The divorced couple have to be supported or at least the former wife usually has to be supported. And there are also all kinds of problems to do with the behaviour of children, it seems. This is a controversial matter, but there is some evidence anyway that children brought up in these less conventional circumstances have more trouble of a psychological nature, more difficulties at school, more difficulties integrating into society can be less happy, as you might imagine, when deprived of their parents. And this must be true universally. And the costs are considerable. The costs may create something of a break on the progress of this second demographic transition, partly because of people perceiving the costs themselves and also because governments may try to calm down these trends or at least moderate or manage them in some way, which moderates their cost. The present government, for example, in this country is adopting policies which are trying to mitigate the effect of the second demographic transition. They're not put in those terms. I'm sure our Ministers haven't heard the second demographic transition. Nonetheless, they are grappling with the cost consequences of it in a big way. One challenge to this model is in Eastern Europe. In Eastern Europe, there are very substantial, after the fall of communism, there are very substantial changes taking place in the society. The birth rate, formally quite high by Western terms, about two or so per woman, collapsed over the course of a couple of years. The proportion of birthside marriage greatly increased. The average age of marriage started to be persposed very markedly. Coheritation became very common. All kinds of signs of this kind, which indicated the second demographic transition had at last arrived with the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall and all that. This is really quite a difficult idea to swallow because, of course, what was going on in that part of the world was not an instant increase in GDP per head, an increase in welfare, an increase in social improvement. But on the contrary, it was a time of crisis, of new unemployment, new inflation, things which previously did not existed in the common society, and very considerable reduction in the material standards of living for some time. Much less now, depending on which country you're in. Nonetheless, it looked superficially as a second demographic transition behavior in divorce, in marriage, in birthside marriage was arrived. The circumstances were entirely opposite to those which are meant to promote such trends in more stable societies. Much more likely that these trends were due to a partial breakdown of society to what my Eastern European colleagues call anomy, and that was manifested in the fact that quite the most extreme development of these patterns, the abandonment of marriage, birthside marriage divorce were concentrated in the poorer section of the population and also in the rural population, which you wouldn't expect in a second demographic transition model. This is curiously the case in Europe as well. Although intellectuals were the pioneers in these behaviors, intellectuals would be much more likely to challenge religion, challenge received authority and all the rest, and 13 years ago the cohabitation and divorce were something which was more associated with the more literate and professional classes. Now it's quite the reverse. The powerful concentration of divorce, of marital breakdown, of cohabitation, of birthside marriage is in poorer people in less skilled occupation. This just shows the scale of the difference. These are birthside marriage in percent in New Wales recently, according to the socioeconomic category of the father with what used to be called social class one and two on the left, about 20% of birthside marriage, and what used to be called social class five on the right routine manual workers with over 60% of birthside marriage, and this is fairly typical of other countries as well. So the great question is, is this transition starting in rich areas outside Europe, the Anglosphere also, by which I mean England, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada, and the Americas, both parts of the Americas clearly show this development. The US is a pioneer in this development. Europe, especially Western Europe, is right in the forefront. What's happening elsewhere? Can we see signs of this in East Asia? Can we see it in the Middle East? Can we see it in the Gulf States? And the sort of question we want to ask are is marriage being delayed? Is the choice of marriage partner free? Is divorce increasing? Is cohabitation happening? Is it becoming more acceptable morally? Are birthside marriage correspondingly increasing? Is society becoming more secularized? Are women treated? One of the crucial elements of this second demographic transition is what's called in more jargon gender equity, the equal opportunity and equal performance of women in education and promotion, in politics and everything else, and the tolerant attitudes gaining ground towards homosexuality, abortion, and always other things prominent in societies which are following these demographic patterns. Well, if you look at East Asia, if you'll allow me to jump across the globe a bit, if you look at East Asia, we find certainly that some of these indicators get a tick marked delay in marriage in East Asia. I'm talking about the rich industrial countries of East Asia here, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan. From what were quite early, quite young ages, in the 1950s, this graph goes from 1945 to 2011. You can see it was in Japan, mean age of marriage, women was 23 in 1948 and in Korea even younger, about 20. And now it was 29 and it's still heading upwards in an apparently inexorable fashion. So that one gets a tick, delayed marriage. Also proportions of women never married also appear to be going up. It's too early to tell how many will never get married because they reached age 50 or so and therefore their chances of getting married are low. But these data here show, for example, that in Japan in 1960, women in their 30s, any 9% had never married in 2010, 32% of women in Japan had never married in their 30s and there must be a very good chance that some of those women will never marry in the course of their lifetime. There are lots of reasons why marriage is unattractive for women in Japan, which I won't insult the Japanese by repeating here. But you can see the figures are high. Also in Taiwan, in Singapore, in Hong Kong and they're getting higher in Korea as well. Divorces, also going up. Never negligible in Japan and Korea, particularly in Japan but now the ratio of divorces to marriages in recent years is about 35 to 100. For every 100 marriages in recent years, they've been 35 divorces. This, you'll appreciate, is a rotten indicator because of course the divorces which happen in a particular year are usually, in most cases, not the marriages that happened in that particular year. The ideal would be to look at marriages after five, 10, 15, 20 years and see what proportion had ended in divorce. I can't do that. This is a course indicator, which gives you some idea of the burden of divorce compared with the entry into marriage. And it's getting very high in those countries. However, the crucial test of this second demographic transition is whether this translates itself into tolerance of children being brought up outside marriage or women cohabiting and bringing up children without a husband in the background. And as you can see, it's trivial in Japan which is the long orange line at the bottom. The figure is even now about 20 per thousand, about 2% of births outside marriages. Absolutely unacceptable. My Japanese colleagues are absolutely horrified by what we do in Europe and regard as being completely out of the question that anything of that kind could happen in Japan. They may well be right. However, there are indications in Japan and also in the other countries in that area that things are changing with respect to cohabitation. I used to think that cohabitation in Korea, for example, and Japan was rather limited and rare. When I said this to my students, my Korean and Japanese students who I have a fair number jumped up and said, no, no, Dr Colvin, this is wrong. It's happening all over the place. People just don't talk about it. So it's still more or less unacceptable but apparently gaining ground and there are some statistics to back this up. So if cohabitation is becoming more common, one wonders if births outside marriage can be far behind. It hasn't happened yet, but perhaps it might. The trend is, as you can see, very marginally upwards but from tiny levels. What about the Gulf States and the Arab world? Well, the first demographic transition isn't quite finished yet. So it may be rather premature to start talking about the second one at this stage. Nonetheless, the birth rate in the Arab states has gone down really quite radically in the last two or three decades from quite high levels, from five or six or seven children on average per woman down to, in most cases, just over two. And this is typical of the rest of the world. About half the world's population now live in countries where the birth rate is insufficient to maintain the population in a long run. That is to say that they have a birth rate of fewer than two children per woman. This does not mean, say, the Arab population decline. That comes later, but family planning are declining, the birth rates are clearly nearly universal and has happened quite fast recently in the Gulf States. So that is underway, although population growth is still quite fast for reasons of demographic momentum. Certainly, there's progress in education and in the economy. Certainly, marriage is delayed, although not, I don't think, yet avoided by anybody. Certainly, there's a high level of divorce. So the second demographic transition checklist gets those ticks. But other things are absent. There's little evidence of habitation as far as I know. Births outside marriage are very few and would involve very serious family upsets, as far as I can understand. About these things, I hope, to learn very much more from this audience. There's very powerful, in most countries, sexual inequality. Women are often controlled. Female workforce participation of the national population, the indigenous native population, in most cases, low. And secularism, homosexuality, adultery, and all of this are very decidedly no-nos. In some cases, illegal, but certainly very partly frowned upon, not just by the authorities, but by the people in general. This is not acceptable form of behavior for women, anyway. Here is a fertility transition, late but quite fast. Starting off, as I mentioned, in the 1950s, up to the 1970s, at about seven children per woman, on average, in all of the Gulf states, falling down rapidly to the present day as indicated by the vertical line. So we're hovering around two, one or two, already below two, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar are both below two already, which is insufficient to replace the population in the long run. Of course, we have migration in huge numbers. Others are slightly higher, but declining. On the right is a projection from the United Nations. Of course, I must emphasize that all projections are always wrong, but this is the best the United Nations can do with all their collective wisdom, and it seems at least one might say plausible. Obstacles to the second demographic transition that you will know much better than I do, and I expect it to learn much more from this audience than I know. But the traditional nature of society is pervasive, both in terms of its politics, in terms of institutions, its law, its sexual relations, and its adherence to religion. Some challenges, perhaps, to it. The rapid economic growth and the growth of a consumer culture may perhaps lead to a new forms of attitude. Is the population growth, which we have very rapidly increasing, is this sustainable? It was faster in some countries than in others. Is that going to cause challenges which will provoke a rethink about the way society is organized? Most crucially, the development of female education. If you have a female population whose role is domestic, reproductive, and sexual, where it is not important or worthwhile to educate that half of the population, then traditional patterns can persist, I guess, forever. If, however, for commendable reasons, and necessary reasons also, it's thought desirable to educate the other half of the population. So it becomes literate, so it moves up the educational ladder and starts competing with men for places in universities, which is very much the case in Europe. There are more men than women in European universities, in many cases at the present time, then everything has got to change because women who are educated, especially moving into the workforce in A numbers, are not going to tolerate current circumstances. There's also a threat to the future of the birth rate. And I have to say that there's a very interesting curiosity here. If you look at the developed countries of the world, there are no developed countries in the world where the birth rate is at what you might call an acceptable level. That is to say about 1.7 or more, which protects you somewhat from decline and from population aging. There's no population where the birth rate is at an acceptable level, where at least 30% of births are not outside marriage. Those countries in the developed world, where most births are confined to marriage, have damagingly low birth rates. I'm talking about parts of Southern Europe, I'm talking about the East Asia in particular. These face population decline, but possibly unsustainable levels of population aging. Now, all I'm drawing attention to is an empirical fact. You can't get a decent birth rate without lots of women having babies outside marriage, usually in cavity associations, of course. If women aren't allowed to do it their way, then the birth rate is catastrophically low. Now, there may be exceptions to this. It may be the Gulf states will prove an exception and show the rest of the world that it can be done. Nobody else yet has done so. So just to look at some of the data very briefly, a marriage is still universal, so no indication from existing cohorts that marriage is being abandoned. Marriage is certainly being delayed. I haven't got proper data for the Gulf states. I'm very sorry. All I've got is Western Asia, which is far too broader a category, but it's mostly Arab, and as you can see, percent of women currently married by age group are declining from 1970, which is the top graph down to the present time 2010, which is a green graph and projected by the UN again to 2030. Delay of marriage, but no, so far, not much reduction in proportions ever married. High levels of divorce, ratio of divorce to marriage about 30 divorces per 100 marriages per year, the same bad indicator that I used for the Far East, but as I mentioned, it's the only one that I had to hand. And the future, to summarize. The Gulf states do seem ostensibly to be the least likely candidates in the world for acquiring this Western disease or patent, whatever you want to call it, of the second demographic transition. There are, however, challenges. Continued population growth, combined with a continued decline in the birth rate, the need for other reasons to indigenize the economy and diversify it, which may make mobilizing the female population into the workforce much more important than previously. If that happens, then you are transferring power to women away from men. The demands of the more educated population I've already mentioned, and the temporary migration system has some question marks over it, not the least being as to whether it can remain temporary, given trends which I think Dr. Philippe Farr will be talking about later on. So just to wrap up, this revolution in sexual behavior has happened in most Western societies. It's empirically there in living arrangements and the setting for reproduction and divorce and all the rest of it. And it seems to be reasonably clearly associated with wealth, with welfare, with secularism, the retreat of religion and other patterns of that kind, many of which are unthinkable in the Gulf states. So far, it's only created diversity, not uniformity. I think this will remain the case. The social and economic costs, I think, will limit its scope, both at the personal level and at the government level. Similar kinds of trends in marriage and divorce can be seen in other parts of the world, in Eastern Europe, for example, but they require different explanations. The same phenomenon may have very different causes in different parts of the world. The circumstances in the Gulf are highly propitious, but the crucial factor is going to be female autonomy. The progress of women will challenge traditional authority, if I may get out to say so, and traditional patterns. And if women advance in education, in the workforce, in influence in the country, then it may well be. That which is now unthinkable, unimaginable, and for which there is little evidence, may finally come to pass, as it did in Britain from 1950 onwards. Chairman, I will stop there. Thank you very much.


Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to another episode of condo insider. My name is Jane so you more I'm going to be your host for the show today. And today we're going to be talking about benchmarking utilities and the reason why we're talking about this is there was a bill that was introduced in the city council I think it was a couple of weeks ago I know it past first reading. And recently there was a second hearing on second reading. And at the time, we didn't know anything about it. And so we were kind of off guard. And so we've decided that you know we need to become involved with this because the bill is going to require condominiums and co ops to do benchmarking of water and electricity. And we're going to, we're having been Sullivan from the Honolulu office of climate control sustainability and resiliency here to explain things to us, so that we understand what's going on. Hopefully, we will be able to educate you so that if you have a concern, there's still time for you to participate in the deliberations because this bill still has is still being considered by the city council hasn't passed out yet. So, I want to welcome as my guest today Ben Sullivan, who is the energy program manager for the Honolulu office of climate control. Thank you Ben for being with us. Thank you Jane really appreciate the opportunity to be here today. Yeah, thank you for coming to explain to us what this what benchmarking is all about. Can you tell us exactly you know what is your background in this area. Sure, sure. My background, as far as education is I have a bachelor's degree in environmental design from the University of Colorado. I have been working in for municipal government for over 10 years and similar roles and so I came to the city and county. About one year ago from the county of Kauai where I served in as the energy and sustainability coordinator for 10 years. And prior to that, I did some work with electric utilities KIC over on Kauai Island, as well as some building design and architecture work and basically what was a previous career before that. And so now you're with the Honolulu department of climate change. Correct the office of climate change sustainability and resiliency which is attached to the mayor's office here in the possibility. Okay, and what so what do you do in your capacity of energy program manager. So the primary guidance that I have is that from as the energy program manager is comes from a document called the city's climate action plan. The climate action plan was adopted actually about one year ago by the city council, and it provides guidance for the city as to how to proceed with both policies and programs to help our whole island to address concerns around climate change and climate change primarily a document that talks about energy policy, both with buildings and with transportation, and then also some with waste and really outline strategies for the next for the next five years but really for the long haul in terms of how we how we continue to reduce our concerns eventually down to zero. And so it's a very challenging mission that we have and it's very broad, but we basically support agencies across the city and then we also support the you know island wide efforts to achieve the goals I just outlined. You know, to today we're here to talk about benchmarking because there's a bill in the city council, and it's bill 22. It's pending before the city council, and it would require condominiums and co ops and how to make annual benchmarking reports to the city, as to their usage of water and electricity. Great question, great question. So, so just to clarify, it's not singling out condominiums and co op. It's actually all all buildings over a certain size and so it would include all commercial buildings of various different types, as well with the exclusion of industrial buildings. So it includes retail buildings include commercial buildings that include hotels as well. Benchmarking is just like what it sounds like or what you hear in business right it's performance benchmarking so. So often in business week we established performance performance metrics, and we compare ourselves to industry standards as a way to improve our performance. Benchmarking is very much the same thing so it's really saying how can we create some foundational information that allows a building in the in the area of energy and water utilities to compare itself to other similar buildings and so that you can gain valuable information about your performance. So, and since you know this is the city office of climate can change that's sponsoring or supporting this bill. Why is this information important to the city. So, the information again aligns with the directive that we have in the climate action plan so I don't know how much time you spend in the energy side of things Jane I'm definitely looking forward to learn learning more about the condo side of things but but from the energy perspective the state has very very ambitious goals and that they include trying to get to zero carbon emissions by 2045. This is this is already in state statute and so buildings represent a third of the emissions we create on the island of a walk. So, so a full one third of all the emissions you know the other two thirds are roughly coming from ground transportation and air transportation there's a little bit there from waste and those are very approximate numbers but you get the idea so so buildings are very important source of emissions that we have to try and reduce and certainly one of the ways we do that as we we create renewable energy so he goes a lot of work with solar and wind and other sources in order to avoid emissions resulting from combustion of coal or oil. But in addition to that we need to also become more efficient because as you probably know there's just not simply not enough space on the island for all those resources to supply an endless amount of energy if our energy use keeps growing. And so what the purpose of the bill is it's the purpose of the bill is to support informed decision making and building through building management, so that everyone has an opportunity to reduce the energy use and then specifically for policymakers like myself. It creates a much clearer perspective on how buildings are currently performing and where we can provide help. So whether there might be policy help or there might be financial help or other help able for buildings that are performing poorly, we were able to advocate for those changes at this at this point in time. That information is actually fairly difficult to come by which I know sounds. It sounds like it should be easy to get but it's really not. And how would this information be helpful to condos and and and coops I mean because it's not something that you know we do. Sure. So how would it help us. So that's a that is a key question and that's a great question and and I believe the way it would help you is again being able to say okay how is our building, you know, obviously co-op managers and building managers are already in many cases very energy conscious because they know it's an it's an important fixed cost or operational cost that they have to deal with and so they probably do a lot of things already to drive down their energy use. Is that is that a fair assumption. That is a fair assumption and you know with condominiums I mean we're, we're very cognizant about costs because, as you know, with condominiums of our unit owners end up, you know, having to pay for the costs of operating the building. So if anybody is out of our utilities the water and the electricity. There's really basically one main meter. And then the payments are then collected from all of the unit owners. So if anybody is using a lot of water, or running their air, air condition 24 seven, we're all paying for it. And in fact, you know, we are the buildings are working to be no more efficient because I know electrical submetering is a very popular trend and I know my building went through it. And you know, when we went through the electrical submetering. I mean because typically you have one meter for an association for a building. And so we get one HECO bill. And with with the submetering with the submetering, there are meters in every unit. And then the association is able to read and do separate buildings to all the unit owners. What happened when we did the electrical submetering and HECO did come and Hawaii energy came and you know they had a town we had a town meeting where we had the owners, you know, come and basically ask questions about this new process. And it was what we learned is that when people have to pay for their own electricity. They didn't run their air conditioner 24 seven, because they because it hit home that hey if I use this, I'm going to pay for it. And my neighbor is not going to subsidize it. And, and, and overall the electrical usage in the building went down. Absolutely right and so this is really a very much related principle and so I think, I think if we talk about just kind of zooming out for a second we talk about the evolution of metering and how buildings have been managed. As you pointed out, a lot of buildings were much more commonly master metered, you know, 1020 30 years ago, and the trend in the market today and really has been for actually several decades is individual submetering per unit. And so, as you condominium as you know, the vast, vast majority of them are submitted already at purchase and that's been the case for, like I'd say a couple of decades I don't have the exact date, but the older buildings you're correct they had to come back in and submit it retroactively and that did a lot for energy management. And that it obviously it creates awareness and it creates user decision that the what benchmarking allows us to do again is to look at the whole building performance and so because there's not a master meter anymore in many cases it's just a bunch of individual meters. We don't know how the overall building is performing as compared to it. It's reasonable comparable peers. So what I mean by that is, you might, you might as a building manager say okay I'm doing everything I can because I've replaced LED lights. And you know I've done this and that but if you don't have a way to compare that like, for example by saying, what other buildings in the city have, you know, 40 apartment units about the same size, they also have a pool or maybe they don't have a pool just similar characteristics, and how are they performing, and am I in the right ballpark am I in you know am I in the median or am I high, high energy user am I a low energy user. Without that information it's really difficult to know if there's other things you can do to improve your energy use and then it's also difficult for us as policymakers to know where the most support is needed, because we don't have a clear picture of exactly how each building is performing we just have a list, a really really really long list of meters that show how much you know how much people are using an individual unit. And so this is about creating visibility. Another aspect of the program Jane is is called the transparency component. And the transparency component is about letting the public know how building is performing overall as well so again this is this, this, this proposed program is not targeted just to residential buildings it's all building types. And then on tenant, let's say you have a renter in one of your buildings, they're able to get visibility into how the overall building is performing versus other building. And so that that information can help inform purchasing decisions and, as you know that's already effectively in place for the sale of individual units but it doesn't exist at the building level. So that's really what's behind it, you know, one of the things that some cities have done as a result of these programs is they've set up, they've set up funds to help with retrofits, especially for affordable housing. You know, not always throughout the whole market, but for housing where the people are already perhaps and on the lower side of the income scale. They'll set up additional resources that are given that are provided to those buildings, so that they can actually do do retrofit and continue to drive down those bills. So I hope that starts to explain it but there's certainly a lot more to talk about and I'm happy to continue answering some questions.  I mean, we have replaced our lighting with LED lights. And we have. I know that we are looking at a lot of buildings are doing PV panels to, you know, make the electricity more efficient. So why aren't single family homeowners included in bill 22. That's a great question and the reason they're not included is because at some point there's a diminishing return relative to the work required to actually track the usage of the building. And it's also because at the individual homeowner level you're already getting all the information for the performance of the building so the program really target building management as opposed to individual owners. There's a whole audience to help potentially improve performance as well as policymakers and others as I described, but with a single family home that information is already readily available there's one meter to the home. The individual knows how it's performing and they have total control over those decisions and so that there's not, there's not a strong of a need for comparative benchmarking. But with a condominium to you know, it's it's not, you know, like with water with water. There, I, I, I'm not, I don't think we've come up with a way where we can do some metering of water. And you know, and, and that's a concern when you have. I know in my building, you have brumblings, when you have, you know, people who have their cousins and everybody you know you have a unit a three bedroom unit, and you have 14 people living in there. And people are yelling and screaming about water. Right. And if you're, if you're a single person, you know, living in the unit you're supporting that person's water usage. Right. And you know so so you know so there is grumbling about and there's nothing you can do about. That's right. You're correct and this program doesn't address that specific concern but I will actually give you a little anecdote from another city who implemented this. I don't know if this would ever, this would ever apply to the end of the buildings you're familiar with but I did. It was specific to water so I'll share it right now so there's a, I think I want to say it was Stan Jose who interested who initiated a benchmarking program but I could have the city wrong and I'll follow up with you. But the point of the story is anyway that this, this building manager did the benchmarking and saw looked across their portfolio of several dozen buildings and saw one that's where the water use was just absolutely out of control higher than the other building, like, like orders of magnitude more water, and they went to investigate it and they found out there was two individuals who lived in the building that were running a car wash business from the building. During during daytime hours and it just had happened to get past the building manager because they weren't there at those times. And so they were actually taking all that water and utilizing it and they were able to make the correction because they know the building manager hadn't otherwise known and obviously that's a very extreme case. But my point is that information is power and when you have better information both comparative and and historical for your use you can begin to say okay. You can you can troubleshoot right like if you're if you're building last year was was using, you know, 10,000 kilowatt hours and this year all of a sudden it's using 15,000 kilowatt hours. You can ask those questions whereas whereas if you have, you know, perhaps at the same time you had a new manager come in they maybe didn't know that it used to only use 10,000 and so they just say okay well it's efficient. We've done everything we've done what we can but they may not know that there's a piece of equipment that's failing and it's not showing any signs it just performing poorly and giving off a lot of heat right so that that that can create a lot of waste and so this is again just a tool to simplify that. One thing that I think is really important to emphasize because we we really recognize when we set up this program that we cannot burden people with additional administrative chores that are just busy work so. One of the one of the objectives we laid out when we started designing this program is we have to make it as easy as possible for building managers to comply with the benchmarking ordinance. And so I'm happy to go into more detail on that but I'm going to start by just saying the first conversations we had Jane were with the utility, and especially with HECO, because what we didn't want was right if you're trying to get all this information about your building performance. The last thing we want to do is ask someone to go out and talk to every unit owner and try to get their bills. That's a that's just a disaster. So we talked to HECO and we said, Are you able to provide aggregated data for the whole building if the building manager you know the entity that pays the common area bill approaches you for that information and they said yeah we can do that. And so we have worked through systems and we've we've actually tested it with them on city because as you know the city has some housing as well so we went through that process made sure it worked, and we're able to get aggregated data. And so the beauty of that again is it streamlines the process tremendously so there is a process to benchmarking there is a little bit of work, especially in the first year but we're doing everything we can and we will continue to do everything we can to minimize kind of the extra labor associated with with getting it done. Right and you know but the ordinance I noticed for condominiums and coops. The board of directors is responsible for the reporting. That's correct and so the board of directors has within their authority they can obviously put it to the management company to do that if they choose and it's obviously likely there'd be a fee for that. Advocacy and part of our work is to reach out to the management associations and make them aware of the resources that help streamline the process so if they have a client in the form of a board, come to them and say we need to benchmark. We want to make sure the management companies know that it can be done affordably, especially when you're in the position of the management company and you can do 25 buildings right it's a lot easier as you know to do anything 25 times. You can do it once by a bunch of different people. And so that's that's one possible route that will save a lot of time and effort as well. But certainly there's you know there's cities around the country that have been implemented benchmarking and there's plenty of best practice that we're following as well. We're making an investment in a very sophisticated customer information system and support system that will allow us to have a help desk and have history of calls and to understand what problems people are having and how we can follow up and support. So this is not just something that we're going to say please do it and then and then abandon you we're hiring an additional staff member on the team was going to be charged with the benchmarking program explicitly. We it's our intention to prove that that we can be partners on this we you know we need the results, but we can't just demand them and then walk away we intend to partner we intend to solve problems in collaboration with those who have to perform the work. I'm glad to hear that, but why can't the city get this information from the border water supply and from people. That's a great question so from the border water supply. We, you know, we can get it and and in fact we're working on streamlining that transfer of data and information as much as we can but it's again the purpose of benchmarking is not just for us to have it it's for the building manager to have that information. We want we want the we want the building that and the person who's responsible for essentially paying the utility bills to have this comparative information in front of them on the on the HECO side. We don't regulate we don't have a have jurisdictional authority over HECO and so in order in order for us to get that information it takes the building owner going to HECO asking for it which they have the right to it and then sharing it with us. That you know that's that's kind of part of how the process work. But again, as far as, as far as accessing the data it is it is, we've already made substantial efforts to streamline that process and we're going to continue to do that. All the way throughout because you know, just like everybody we you know this is the first time we're setting this up for Honolulu so there is a learning curve for us and there certainly will be for building owners. But it's but it's our intention again to just continue to work with people and to collaborate and to find ways to streamline these as an example it's our intention to have workshops that are specific to. To multi unit residential properties, sometimes both both early, you know after the bill passes just informationally but then more importantly, more technically based workshops that are kind of oriented towards helping somebody who's trying to solve that problem. There's a time prior to the bills or prior to the reporting being due so that you know the schedule as of now in the bill is has been amended so that the first reporting period for the largest buildings doesn't come due until June of 2023. So, buildings over 100,000 square feet would be due June of 2023 and then buildings over 50,000 square feet to June of 2024 and then buildings over 25,000 square feet to June 2025 and then and then annually once you have your base building entered you just have to just enter that utility which is really actually a pretty quick process once you understand how it works. So it's that first year where there's a little bit of work to enter the basic building information. And then in subsequent years it's really just about getting the 12 months of utility data for each of the utility for each of the energy and water utilities into the system. So for, for example, then for for a condominium if we if this bill passes, and it gets implemented. And in. And so, how does this work does a building manager, then contact HECO and say okay, there's this law we need for HECO to provide this information to our property manager, in Hawaii. Is that is that what happens we have to sign something and then HECO will just transfer the information over or do they give it to us and then we have to give it to our property manager. Oh, so HECO will provide the the information to whomever is already on the common area bill. I would say, for example, if Hawaii Anna is the is the is the entity that is writing the checks to HECO, then it would be Hawaii Anna who would who would request the information and then they could they could either give it to you or perform the benchmarking on your behalf. If the association is the one who's writing the checks and it would be the association that needs to reach out to HECO and that's just simply an authorization letter if, if you wanted to just give Hawaii Anna agency to get that data you could write a quick letter which HECO will have a template for and just say, we authorized Hawaii Anna to get our data for the purpose of benchmarking and then that data would be made available. Okay, and then, and then so so so our involvement are meaning, you know, an association's involvement appears to be minimal. We basically authorized HECO to release information to our property manager and they're supposed to take over and do it. So, there's a business decision for the association right so we don't want to we don't want to skim over that there is a cost to doing this work so the presumably your property manager is going to inform you of that cost so you can decide whether you want to use them, or just, you know, have some other methodology to do it I don't know what that would be. But, but that's that isn't a you know I don't want to skim over that because we recognize that's an important part of the conversation. So, so yes, the expectation would be that property management companies would provide this service to their clients in the form of HOA boards or AOAOs. And you know I have talked to, you know, one of, you know, two of them to representatives of the management companies, and, and they said well until we find out what it entails. We don't know what, but assuming we have to spend some time, we're going to charge you guys and I said okay, you have an idea what that fee will be and they said well until we find out how much time we're going to have to spend on this. We don't know but if we're going to have to spend time you will be built. And, and I will speculate here, but I will speculate that the management companies that are able to do this quickly and understand the scope of it will be able to perform the service really inexpensively and as an example. Some of the management companies that that manage proper residential properties in Hawaii already do this in other states, because they work nationally. So, so they on their staff, you know, whether it be not necessarily their Hawaii staff but on their corporate staff have knowledge about how to perform these services and the, and the programs are very, very similar because we all use the same benchmarking tool provided by the federal government through the EPA. So it's very similar and so they should they should be able to share that information but part of the outreach we're going to be doing between now and and June 2023 that first deadline is to both HOA and Association, and also to building management companies to make to make sure they can answer those questions and so certainly that's important and one of the reasons we actually delayed the implementation date was getting once we understood better that hey, you know this has to be in a budget so you got it. The implementation has to be available by September, October at the latest so this can get into the budget process and then the following year that funding is available and and can be executed even if it's just a small amount right we can't just, we can't just left it off and say well figure it out it's got to be in the budget and so, so that that's one of the reasons that the we push back the date, and it's also the reason we'll be doing extensive outreach, you know again like I said to clarify. But but there's you know right now the conversation is about that how the bill functions or how the program functions and then once on passage it will be about providing more information so people can learn and you know at the at the level of management and those that are most. I guess most have the most touch points and then disseminate that information as well as finally at the at the level of those performing the task will will be providing actually like hands on technical training. And also help and support so you can you know you can already read today about what it takes and so a proactive company if they have the time and resources can do the investigation now and learn okay what is it going to take us to do this and be prepared. But we understand that people don't always have time to be proactive so there's there's trainings online. And then we are going to have, like I said, the, you know the opportunity and the format is still being worked out but likely workshops, where you just show up as a building manager you say okay, I'm trying to perform these tasks I managed, you know, 10 building. Here's my 10 buildings here's what I've, here's where I'm stuck can you help me with X problem or why problem I can't find the exact square footage of my building or I don't know how to answer this question it's asking me about water usage right. I have a ton of questions to input in the system but they're, they're new to people and so we recognize that we have to be there to help them answer the questions or else it's just a disaster. Yes, and then you know we're running out of time. There's two things I want to raise. Number one, is there a website where people can go to get more information. Yes, so I will again share the link it's not a very easy to read link but we have an FAQ document on our website. It's one of the, should I put it in the chat and then perhaps you guys can post it is that possible. Or you can just read and read it out while while while. Okay, I'll do that. So it's www.resilient a Wahoo backslash backslash hnl all caps face benchmarking face FAQ dot PDF. Again, it's a mouthful so and and if you send it to me in the chat, I will make sure we circulate it. And I also wanted to let you know, and I sent this to you in an email.   And you know you should, you know, contact them and and and and try to try to be at one of their meetings, because you're going to have a lot of people there. And these are the guys who interact with the boards, right, the resident managers. Very, very helpful. Thank you. And, and, and I run an arm. And I am part of iran so if you contact iran, you know, I think that's that's a resource on those are the guys, you know, who, who work with the board because the board is, you know, they're volunteers, and they rely on their resident managers and their property managers and the it's just to keep them informed on what's happening. And that's why we were, we felt kind of blindsided when I got this email one day from Carol Fukunaga, did you know about this. Right. It was like, my God, I know about this. And I want to own that Jane and take responsibility and apologize to we did reach out to iron and about February but apparently it didn't get back to everybody and so we know we didn't know. I mean, again, this is on us, but we didn't reach every single group and so my apologies because it is very important that you have that information. So thank you for the additional contact. And we're going to continue to outreach. You know, we did reach out to Boma and CA I filled just just a little while ago feel near me. I'm going to talk to the Hawaiian Hawaiian properties while you're on a touchstone, CBR e on the commercial side, Kamehameha schools, a lot of outreach but obviously it's never enough and so, again, my apologies and thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to share information. And we look forward to partnering. Thank you for being on on condo insider today because, you know, this was like, like I said, you know, when I got that email from careful conaga, I really felt like we were being blindsided, you know, because nobody had mentioned it. And, you know, when I was asking around I was like, no, we, you know, we haven't heard. And so, you know, so thank you very much for being on our show. And, and we will try to get the word out. And if you could contact these others to help you with, you know, getting the message out. I think that will be helpful. And thank you so much for being on our show today to tell us about what benchmarking is all about. Because I think it's, it's something that's, that's going to happen. And we appreciate the office of climate change agreeing to our request to put off implementation to 2023. We really appreciate the extra time. And thank you so much for appearing on our show and for our viewers, spread the word. And share the kind of insider insider show with your friends and colleagues because this is coming. And if you have a concern, you know, show up at the city council meeting because there's still a third third reading there's a committee meeting still on this bill, and it hasn't been adopted so And have a concern. Now's the time to speak up. And thank you for joining us for this episode of condom insider, and please join us next week for another episode of condom insider for people who live and work in condominiums. Thank you very much Mahalo and Aloha. Mahalo. Mahalo.