Welcome, everyone. My name is Paul O'Cain. I am a member of the Scottish Parliament and the deputy convener of the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee. I would like to welcome you all to the special online edition of the Festival of Politics 2021, in partnership with the Parliament's think tank, Scotland's Futures Forum. This afternoon's panel is entitled, Cut Your Food's Carbon Footprint, and it is being held in partnership with the Robert Institute of the University of Aberdeen. We are delighted that so many people are able to join us online today. I look forward to hearing comments, discussions and questions as we go through this afternoon, focusing on a very important and relevant topic. I am sure that everyone else is looking forward to seeing questions and comments. This is a time when it is critical to ask questions about where food comes from and the production process that is involved before it lands on our plates. How will climate change affect our weekly shop? What practical changes can we make to minimise our carbon footprint from rethinking food miles to innovative urban farming or embracing new forms of bug foods? The panel aims today to try to address all those questions within the next 60 minutes, so please stay with us. As I have already said, I encourage you all to take part. Today is very much about an interactive experience, so please use the event chat function to introduce yourself, stating your name and your geographical location and any questions that you would like to pose for the panel to respond to. That brings me to our panel, and I am delighted to be joined by four panellists today. Professor Staira Bridal is Professor of Food, Climate and Society at the University of York and author of the book Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air. Professor Jenny McDermid is Professor of Sustainable Nutrition and Health at the University of Aberdeen and Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Challenges in Health, Nutrition and Wellbeing. Abbey Morden is co-founder of the Glasgow Food Policy Partnership and Pete Ritchie is director of Nourish Scotland. He is a very warm welcome to all of our panellists today, who are all very busy people but have kindly agreed to join and help to lead our conversation. As I said, there will be an opportunity for the audience to put questions and views to the panel throughout the event. I will keep an eye on those and bring them in as we go along. As I said already, if you want to put your comment or question, please use the chat box. We will try to get through as many as possible, because I know that people are keen to contribute. However, what we will do just to start is to ask each of our panellists to perhaps comment on those predictions that we have cited in the report from Oxfam that most people will start to directly experience climate change through the impact on their food, what do they eat, the price that they have to pay and the availability. If we can have some initial thoughts from each of our panellists on that. I will come first to Professor Sarah Bridle, then to Professor Jenny McDermid, then to Abbie, followed by Pete. We will start with Professor Sarah Bridle. I think that this is really important to get across. A lot of people will not necessarily feel that climate change is going to be something very tangible to them. Over the past year, we have become much more aware of the fragility of our food system and how it can actually be affected by events, including in the future extreme weather. I think that this is really helpful to emphasise the fact that food is going to be affected by extreme weather events in this country, but it could also be by extreme weather events in other countries that impact what we can access. Also, there could be changes in how much people are prepared to export, as we have seen that happen before, for example in 2008, with protectionism, which could also affect what we can get hold of. I think that this is a really tangible thing that is emphasising the importance of climate change. I welcome the highlighting of these topics from Oxfam. Thank you very much. We will come to Professor McDermid next. Yes, hello. I agree with what Sarah just said. Adding to that is probably the cost of food. As the systems deal with climate change and what impact that is going to have on our food system and production of food, food prices are going to probably increase. The concern there is the inequality that that might create in terms of who can afford to eat it and who can't. I think that what we are paying for food is going to change. That is the ability to access to food and what can actually be produced with the climate changing, because what we can actually produce will also change, not just with extreme weather events, but as climates get warmer, get colder, flooding more drought, that will affect what we can produce as well. I think that this is going to have serious implications for changing what we eat to mitigate climate change, as well as to adapt to it. Thank you. I know to Abby. From my perspective, many people in countries in the global south have been experiencing challenges to their food supplies through disruptions to the climate system for a very long time. We are just starting to experience that here. A huge amount of what we produce in Scotland is not actually what we eat in Scotland particularly. We are quite reliant on imports from countries of quite fragile climates, for example rice from the global south and vegetables, largely speaking, from Spain and Italy. Those countries are much more on the front line, I suppose, if you might say, of climate change than we are. The availability of the produce and food that we used to eat is going to become a lot scarcer, unless we start paying attention to what we produce in Scotland and how we produce it. Just to echo Jenny's comments on availability and the price point of these products as well, we will definitely, as the basic economics supply and demand, the more scarce resources, the more expensive it becomes. Thank you for that, Inesol Insight, and we will come to people tonight. Thanks Paul. It wouldn't be much for a debate if we all just said the same thing, so I'm just saying exactly the opposite. The cost of transport has fallen dramatically in the last century. The cost of food has fallen dramatically in the last century. Our problem isn't too little food, our problem is too much food that we can produce in the world. We have a capacity to produce far more food than we need, and the reason people go hungry is because they don't have any money. I don't think that we can rely on the threats of climate change to influence our—to drive our decisions about food policy. We need to have a more sustainable food system. We need to limit red meat consumption, high—well, and white meat consumption, that part. We don't want that, and farm fish consumption in our high-consuming countries, because it's a grossly inefficient use of resources, and we need to level up in terms of our impact on biodiversity and climate in the way that we eat. As other speakers have said, we need to make sure that people on low incomes can eat as good a diet to be on the high incomes, but that's a matter of social policy. We certainly can't rely on droughts and pestilence to change our food choices. We have to rely on some choice editing, and it's interesting that Compass has already taken air freighted food off their menus. Some of the big retailers and caterers will do some of that choice editing for us, which they wouldn't have done 10 years ago. Then we have to look at some of the fiscal measures in terms of things like carbon pricing to actually re-internalise the externalities in our food system. That's something that has to happen through, probably, certainly at EU level, actually trying to change the market, so that the market failure that we have at the moment in our food system is reversed. At the moment, all those things—the degrading of our natural ecosystems, the driving of climate change, the exploitation of workers—are not reflected, and the poor health that some of our food produces are not reflected in the price of food. It's getting the price right that we need to do, and that's a policy issue, not primarily a natural process. We can't rely on natural processes. We have to take charge of the policy. Thank you very much. I thank our panellists for setting the scene for our conversation. I think that decent and debate are always welcome in the discussions, because it informs, perhaps, our thinking more richly. Someone in the chat has asked for the Oxfam report link that has now been posted up, so people are able to digest that as we go through and, indeed, after the event, as well as a very detailed piece of work. Just to remind everyone to get your questions in, but I'm going to perhaps kick off and ask some questions to our panellists that are based on their comments so far. I think that I'll come to Jenny McDermid first. Jenny, how do you think that we can encourage or, indeed, support people to make better carbon choices, perhaps, when it comes to food? Do we have to look at issues around labelling, or is it perhaps something more fundamental than that, do you think? I think that we need to look at multiple aspects of this. Labelling is important, but we know from a nutrition perspective that labelling isn't sufficient to change what people are doing. Those who are concerned about it provide them with helpful information, but it doesn't get people in the mainstream population to change their diet. I think that we need to look at availability to alternatives. We need to look at the whole food chain, so what can be done in terms of what's happening in the terms of production of food, the supply of food that reaches the consumer, because I don't think that we should leave any one sector to solve this problem. It's got to provide consumers with the choice of food. If that's more low-carbon alternatives, so maybe less meat, then we need to look at that, but we also need to look at people's lifestyles as well. I think that this is something that we forget quite a lot in terms of trying to change behaviours, is how do we get it to fit into a certain lifestyle, what people desire, etc. It's interesting at the moment that we're seeing more and more convenience food that are plant-based, and this talks to people's issues around we need to have something that's convenient. I don't want to spend time cooking, I don't know what to cook, I just want something easy. I think that that's one way, but I come also from a nutrition perspective. My concern there is that the two aren't running in parallel at the moment, so a lot of the convenience foods that are coming out aren't necessarily healthy. The plant-based ones aren't necessarily healthy, so I think we need to make sure those still run in parallel, but we don't forget one or the other. I think we do need to encourage people, we need to look at ways that we can make alternatives attractive, because one of the barriers that people say, I enjoy eating meat, I don't want to give it up, the alternative wouldn't be tasty. I think we need to do multiple things across the whole food system that doesn't just rely on the consumer having to make all the changes. It's got to be something that's done across the whole food system. I think that that's very true. We have seen a substantial growth in plant-based burgers, being the kind of thing, and those meat alternatives. Jenny, you're right that we see those often in perhaps a fast food environment now, and a really big marketing push on those. Equally, restaurants such as the Grubb kitchen in England, which is attached to a bug farm, is trying to make more of a process around that, of understanding how we get to that product being available. I don't know if, Salah, do you have any thoughts on that at all, from that point of view? I think that what we find when we talk to people about this topic is that there are a lot of people who are already trying to eat two foods in an environmentally sustainable way who don't necessarily have access to the right information. For example, you might think that their solving climate change by reducing their plastic use is very common misconception that we run into. While I take on board totally Jenny's point and agree with Jenny's point that the research shows that giving people more information doesn't change what they eat, but at the same time, I believe that the research also shows that, if you give people more information, for example, on sugar-causing obesity, it does change people's receptiveness to changes in policy. What we saw yesterday coming out, there was a bit of a kerthuffle with a document appearing on a Government website, which then was removed again or clarified in terms of what the Government meant about its potential to put climate taxes on food. This is something that is really politically toxic and very difficult for politicians to come out and say, I'm going to do a new policy on the climate impacts of food, for example labelling or even taxation, but we have to have that as a first step. Otherwise, we're all talking cross-purposes potentially about the size of the impacts of different types of food. You spoke quite—it was quite interesting to hear you talk about choice and about perhaps some people failing that their choices are often limited, so they want to make the right decision, but there has to be a variety of ways to make that happen. Something that we've seen is that quite a lot of people want to make choices within their weekly shop even about how they're purchasing, if you like, but sometimes they feel constrained by the fact that they may live in a tenemental property or flat. Over the course of Covid, we've seen a lot of that to do with physical and mental wellbeing, of not having a garden space, of not having access to a place where you can be outdoors. For a lot of people who might want to grow their own, there's not always that option, and we know the challenges that there are around allotment provision and things like that. Do you think that there are alternatives? Do we need to look at more urban farming? Do we need to think about the spaces that are available in cities and things like that? That's a very different question, but we absolutely need to grow urban farming in Scotland. We've got so much land in our city, so much derelict vacant land from the industrial revolution and brownfield sites. We've got potential to put controlled environment glasshouses on that, grow all our own med-veds and stop having to bring them in, relying on a lot of water from very arid parts of Spain, but also slave labour, to be honest, in a lot of our food. We can create good, oily, round jobs, growing those tomatoes and other things that we do prefer to turnips. I know that we should eat turnips, but we actually prefer the tastiest stuff, so let's grow it in Scotland. I think that it's a really good idea. Let's welcome it and get Abby to say more about urban farming, because that's her thing. It delivers on so many things. It's not just food production, it's everything else, but let Abby say more about that. We haven't mentioned food waste, but obviously that went down during the pandemic, because it was such a drag going to shops, and we looked towards it in our fridge first, and it's gone back up again. That's the obvious thing, but we need to support people and create a food environment where it's easier not to waste food. Just to say in terms of your weekly shop, there is an information overload for people, and there's a nice wee browser that's been developed by the University of Glasgow, which is a plug-in to your Tesco shop or your Sainsbury shop or whatever, and it'll give you real-time feedback on the carbon footprint during on some of the databases that people like Jenny have developed, so it'll actually tell you how you're doing. You don't have to read labels, it does that for you. Things like that can help if people want, because a lot of people do want to be more aware of their footprint. If things like that work and in tests that's reduced people's footprint by about 14, 15 per cent, it's the sort of thing where actually the supermarkets could all agree to provide that sort of information to people. Already caterers have put in carbon labelling on their menus, so we will see more useful information coming forward to help people to make those choices, but I'll hand it over to Abbie on the urban food stuff. Great. Abbie, tell us about urban farming. I do want to come to you on some of the global issues as well, but go for it. Sure thing. Obviously I've been working in and around Glasgow for the last 15 years, mostly around community foods, and I think food education has a huge part to play in all these topics that we're talking about, both at a community level but really trying to get really good all-round food systems education into schools from a very, very early age so that people have a very thorough understanding really of how our food is produced but not just the carbon impacts on that but the impacts on nature, biodiversity and so forth. An excellent physical manifestation of that is through urban farming. Glasgow's great. It's got three market garden collectives operating in and around the city, so the wash house garden in Parkhead, Tenement Veg who have got a couple of different sites, and Locavore of course who currently occupy the Bella Houston site. The Bella Houston site is an ex-council nursery site, so massive greenhouses, lots of polytunnels, as well as an outdoor space. The wash house garden is a very small social enterprise and they provide quite an affordable box scheme to people within the east end of the city and they have an excellent, really excellent volunteering and on-site education programme. So, as Pete said, so much vacant derelict lands, some of it green space, some of it controversially under maintained or disused golf courses that the city council are currently relinquishing out of their control and so there's a huge opportunity to develop urban agriculture on quite a large scale within the city boundaries itself as well as looking into the sort of, you know, the peri-urban kind of environment as well. Another really good site, Glasgow specific again, is the Dal-Dawi site, another kind of an ex-training centre of the Glasgow City Council for Horticulture and that sits between sewage works and the crematorium. So, you know, from a kind of heat capture kind of perspective for heating and lighting greenhouses and kind of increasing the kind of growing season, then we can get those peppers and aubergines and tomatoes of really quite quality in a scale that Pete's talking about. In addition... Oh, I think we have lost Abby, unfortunately. Abby thought you dropped it there for a minute. You were just about to start your next point and then we lost you, so if you want to just start that. Sorry about that. Yeah, there's quite a few projects popping up that are doing indoor vertical farming. So, Glasgow Greens, another really good example of this. They've just taken on 11,000 square feet, I think it is, under what was the Arches Nightclub on Argyll Street and they started off with microgreens that are now growing full-size vegetables and again loads of food education kind of caught up and bound up with that as well and they've got these kind of aspirations to supply fresh green produce to all the schools in Glasgow, so really tapping into that procurement side of things as well, which is a total game changer definitely on a not just an urban context but in a kind of rural context as well. So, yeah, I think in a nutshell, urban farming both indoor and outdoor can provide a kind of multitude of opportunities around training, skills development, food education but of course food production and supply to the inhabitants of the cities. Thanks for that, that's a great insight. I have also seen some great examples that work on a larger level and a smaller level. In my region, I was down in Greenock, a number of the community garden and projects there that are growing their own food. One of them in Belville is actually on the site of former high flats that were taken down a number of years ago and that whole area has been reclaimed and is being put to really productive use. And finally, in the village where I live, we have an incredible edible project which is quite small scale but again allows families and people, just my dad was telling me the other day, popped along and borrowed a courgette, essentially didn't borrow it because he didn't give it back. I think it went into the soup but there are these opportunities, I think, when people are far more switched on to that, is just how do we upscale and support communities to do more of that, I think. We're getting a couple of comments in now, I think, just to pepper the discussion, if you like, something about, I think, farmland being, making sure that we use farmland well and that there's a rush to grow trees to plant woodland upon, you know, farms that aren't in use anymore and I think I'm concerned that that then doesn't allow us to have as productive farmland. Indeed, I visited a farm the other week there and they were discussing that and perhaps some of the carbon offsetting that goes on by big companies, companies who buy a farm and then plant it up. Does anyone have a perspective on that, they want to say, or perhaps?  Yeah, I think that this often comes up, you know, we want to use nature to help to reduce climate change and I just want to put that alternative view out there which is that actually, if we look at the use of farmland, about 80% of land globally is used to feed animals which then, you know, and that uses relatively more farmland over 10 times as much land is needed per calorie of animal food than it is of plant food. So I'm not saying that we need to stop eating animals but we actually do have a huge amount of land there to play with in terms of, you know, reducing the amount of land we use to reduce food if we're going to also reduce greenhouse gas emissions that will inevitably be less to reduce the amount of animals we're eating so that then that could free up land to help reduce climate change. Moving PN as well on that? Yeah, I mean, just to say not all animals are equal and, you know, we spend most of meat we eat, let's be clear, is monogastrics, it's chickens and pigs and we're feeding them on high quality protein and high quality calories which humans could eat. We're also feeding a lot of our farmed fish on a high quality protein that humans do eat, you know, and so there's a real question with ruminants as we know generally not in feedlots but in most of Scotland eat grass we can't eat and they convert human inedible protein into human edible protein and they don't use a lot of calories in the process, right? So and they don't use a lot water in the process unlike feedlot beef so we do have to say not an all animals are equal. I think we're really clear that, you know, we need to moderate our meat consumption and we need to make our farms much more diverse particularly our grassland farms. We need a lot more trees on them, they need more diverse species and they need a lot less nitrogen on them, you know, but I think trading, you know, a diverse grassland for a citrus roof plantation to make some money for a hedge fund is not a good use of public money and at the moment we're putting public money into making that happen. Yeah, I'm good at this. I've got everyone's hands out which is great but I'm going to just kind of, I think, I think the discussion and where we're headed in this at the moment is essentially that tension perhaps between helping farmers to transition the more sustainable farming, you know, are the two aims, you know, of essentially, because food demand is going to increase, we know that, particularly, you know, 35 per cent by 2030. So are those two aims mutually exclusive, you know, can we, can we do both? But I know people want to comment on what they've heard as well, so maybe start with Abby, then go to Jenny and then come to Sarah. Yeah, I just started picking up on the sort of exchanging farmland for forestry kind of perspective. So I relocated in April 2020 down to Dumfries and Galloway out of Glasgow to start running a market garden down here. And I'm in one of the areas of Dumfries and Galloway that is, it's kind of, we've got sicker spruce plantations popping up all over the place, as well as wind turbines and wind farms. And it's a huge, it's a huge issue facing farmers who have been kind of, you know, eking out a living in the uplands for such a long time, raising, as Pete has said, you know, for the majority of that time, grass feds, pasture feds, cattle and sheep who, you know, can actually bring huge benefits to carbon sequestration and nature and biodiversity if they're managed in the right kind of way. Cattle particularly on a sort of low density livestock kind of ratios can be really good for diverse and mixed grasslands and trees, the right kind of trees, the right trees in the right place can provide a huge amount of benefits to livestock as well through shelter, through nutrition, lots of plants, for example, willow, you know, contain nutrients, benefits of nutrients and medicinal qualities for cattle and a lot of the livestock. Yeah, so mixing those two together can have huge benefits, planting hedgerows, for example, can have huge benefits. And just to follow on for your next question, my current work down here is kind of working quite a lot with farmers in this region, which is primarily beef and dairy and lamb. And we've been kind of working on this project for the last year called the Folk to Farm Dialogs. It's part of Norrish's work in the run-up to COP26 and I've been organising groups of farmers and food producers to meet with local authority policy officers to talk about agriculture and climate change and what we can do collectively to challenges to sort of, you know, respond to some of these challenges that are facing us. And I think some of the outcomes from that is really that we're going to set up a kind of nature-friendly farmers network for this area going forward into 2022 because one of the best ways to encourage farmers' transition to sustainable farming is to peer-to-peer learning and support. And for farmers that have done great staff in terms of grassland management or hedgerow planting to kind of go look what I've done, you can do that. You can do that too. It's entirely replicable. But the other side of that is, of course, is that farmers need support financially to do that, not just to implement those changes, but also to continue to manage those kind of changes that they've made, for example, woodland planting and so forth. I'll let someone else come in now. Thank you. Jenny. Well, yes, I mean, some of these points have obviously been raised. And I think two things that I wanted to add to it in terms of land is, as Abby said, if farmers are being encouraged to transition to some sort of other farming that perhaps will have a lower environmental impact, there does have to be financial support for that, where will the subsidies go and can actually the subsidies be set so that they have that as their main focus going forward. Just going back to the issue around planting trees, I think we have to also just be mindful of how long it takes trees to grow. Particularly if you want some of the broadleaf trees, then they do take a long time to grow. What we don't want to do is see the solution now is to plant trees, and we don't need to do anything because the trees will sort out the climate emergency for us. And I think, as we'll see at COP, we don't have much time. We need to be taking action now and just planting them and waiting for 30-something years, etc. But we actually really see some benefits of trees. Then we need to be planting trees, I agree, but we also need to be looking at changing what we're doing because we don't have the time to say, well, we'll wait for that. So as we're talking about today, what we're doing in terms of our food, what people are eating, is something we've got to look at and try to change. I don't think that we have the time to wait for the trees to grow to a level where they are mitigating climate change. Sarah, did you want to come in on that as well? That would be great. I'm not sure if I said that we should plant trees. I was saying nature-based solutions to cover a broad range of possible ways forward. It doesn't have to be either or. It doesn't have to be not having the livestock. As others have said, you can have a mixture of different nature-based solutions on a farm. But I'm really concerned that we need to have a sense of the scale of this problem, alluding to what Jenny was saying there about the amount of time in the agency. Factually, different animals are not equal indeed, but beef and lamb are causing the largest amounts of greenhouse gas emissions per gram of product by quite a large margin at the moment. We need to look at the quantities, not necessarily to stop doing some of these things, but we are actually going to free up a lot more land as well, because they do use more land than the other animals as well. I'm not saying what the solution should be. I think what is raising is that we need a conversation that brings in the stakeholders to decide which of those options we are all going to do together, but in a quantitative way, where we can all see how much different things are going to really have an impact. That is a really good point. Speaking to the farmer and the farm that I was on last week, it was about what is the cumulative impact of action as well and the different actions that people will take depending on their context. The balance of hedgerow planting and some tree planting that they had done was having an impact, as was the way that their cattle were being raised in terms of their grass consumption and all those sorts of things, so they wanted to look at it in more of a cumulative way. As a policy decision maker, we need to look at that in the round, certainly. I will move on to audience questions, but Pete, do you want to come in briefly on this? Obviously, not all land is equal. On my farm, you can't really grow crops, most of it. It's good for grass, it's good for trees, it's good for grass and trees together. Just to remember that, what's swallowing out the best quality land is urban sprawl. It's only 2% of the world is covered in houses and roads at the moment, but it's still often the best land. This thing about reclaiming some of that for urban farming is also really important, because that's where the best land is and often the best climate is. Having served on a planning committee and a local authority in a previous life, I'm going to segue away from that quickly, but I think that it's a fair point about land use and about local planning, and we need to think about that as well in the round. We have a couple of questions really about how do we move food service and restaurant industries around when it comes to sustainable foods and get them to think differently? I think that the rise of plant-based and fake meats, if you like, is that about profit margins for biotech multinationals and does it signal a move away from perhaps more traditional farming in local markets? Is that a problem? Is that a problem, I suppose, for that industry more widely? Abby? I think there's a range of different things that we can do here. One of the projects that we've been working on in Glasgow for the last few years through Glasgow Community Food Network has been the chef's challenge. It's a very much a stunt, it's an event, it's an annual thing, but it's really around raising awareness amongst the hospitality sector in the city, around what's out there that they can possibly use and these misconceptions around what we produce in Scotland or what can be grown in Scotland, for example. The chef's challenge has taken place every September for the last few years and it's got a competition between 20 different chefs and restaurants to use a mystery box of locally sourced vegetables to create a very much a plant-based, veg-based, veg-centred dish and that gets judged. They go through a couple of rounds and the final three sort of have a bit of a cook-off, which gets judged by Gary McLean and Kate Devine, who are both quite well known within the food sector and food writing scene. So I think things like that that raise awareness, chefs like to be competitive, but ultimately there's, I guess my work with the hospitality sector and food economy and food businesses is that, you know, people want, so those businesses want, they want continuity, they need a single point of ordering. They can't be faffing about trying to find, you know, courgettes from over here and, you know, broccoli from over there. So, yeah, it kind of needs a sort of better joined up supply chains, really, that kind of maximise on what we've got available at the same time as increasing the availability of the diversity and range of what we can produce. So it's multiple things, but I think pressure from hospitality sector would be very helpful and procurement as well, you know, because that's kind of their big bias, big bias of large quantities of foods on a regular basis, so we absolutely have to be working with them. Pete? Just to echo that, we've seen a transformation in the last few years in this. We run a project called Peace Pleas across the UK, which is about trying to change the food environment to help people to eat more vegetables. We work with all the multiple retailers, but also all the big catering companies, and catering companies have been biting our hands off basically to get into this, because obviously going to plant-based protein is more helpful for them, it reduces their costs, increases their margins, but they've also got a genuine commitment to some of this stuff. You speak to the chief executive of Compass UK, absolutely on board with this, and you'll have noticed that Compass at the SEC that hosting the COP, they've gone to 80% Scottish, high welfare, sustainable agriculture, and they're absolutely on it. You know, they are serious about this and reducing their food waste and reducing their packaging, and when you see their menus for the COP, you know, this is completely different from what we would have seen five years ago, to dexer the same, back to the story the same, you know, the caterers are moving, the big caterers are moving faster, farther and faster than we'd have expected, but, and we will also know, you know, the restaurants in Glasgow have been crying out, and we've been getting calls all the time, how do we source more local stuff, who's the best place we can source from, where can we get stuff that really shows our climate credentials, because we've got the COP, and that, you know, we're seeing more and more and more restaurants, you know, the place, the ordinary places, not the sort of organic places, the vegan places, but the ordinary places being really interested now in actually understanding about sourcing locally and about sourcing sustainably, and I think, because the caterers directly put stuff on our plates, that's a really important place to start, because they do do choice editing for us. Okay, thank you. We're getting some more audience questions in now, and I suppose maybe linked to that, it's about choice, and how can we make choices more easily, you know, a lot of people are keen to try and do the right things, so perhaps more of a flexitarian diet, I think might be the expression that's used, where reducing meat several days a week, or not eating meat several days a week, is certainly something I've tried to do, but what are the kind of, maybe perhaps, strategies around that, or what are the good ways to do that, that are easy for people to understand and sustainable? Jenny, I know you wanted to come in on the last point as well, so would you be able to take this and then I'll come to Sarah? Okay, well, I was going to come on the last point, because I was going to ask Peter a quick question, which you can maybe come back and answer in a minute, is if everybody's going to source local food, how much local food can we produce? Anyway, so that, Pete, can maybe answer that in a minute, because if every restaurant in the whole of Scotland want to source local food and produce that, is that possible, and if it isn't, what is the next level? But going on to the question about what we want, how can we persuade people to do it? I think there's a number of things that we know from our research that are barriers to this, because people perhaps don't think it tastes good, people, it can be more expensive, I mean, if you look at some of the convenience foods they are more expensive than the meat equivalent, but I think the language we use around this is really important. We keep talking about protein replacements, protein alternatives. We don't need more protein in our diet. Vegetarians and vegan eat more protein than they require, and so there's a fear if you talk to people that if they change their diet and don't eat meat, they will become protein deficient, and there's lots of evidence to support that, that that is one of the big barriers that I'll become protein deficient, particularly among men. The more we talk about protein replacements, the more we're reinforcing that, so I would like to see us talking about alternatives, food alternatives or something like that, because if we were switching to a plant-based diet, protein is the least of our worries in terms of nutrients, so I think there is a language thing that we need to change here as well to overcome that health concern people have. Okay, we're going to say that and then I'll come back to Pete on that first point. Yeah, I mean, I think some of the things I've got to say have already learned from Jenny or reading Jenny's papers, so I think that in terms of the language that it is very much about how you phrase these things, you know, if you put on a menu, for example, you know, meat-free, whatever, that sort of is quite a negative concept, but on the other hand, if you say it as a delicious, you know, whatever, then it can change the uptake of those things, so there's research showing that that's the case. But also, you know, we need what we find is that when we talk to people, they do want to change things, and there's the civic charter just coming out today from Scotland, which has got a huge amount of consensus around, you know, having more on labelling and having more information available, so we can put that information available on the canteens, for example. And that's something that children in schools as well have been asking us when we've talked to them that they're actually going to start labelling some of their foods. So, you know, I think there's a lot to take in every single time we choose what to eat, but still those broad information and information about the great work that maybe Pete's doing on this farm and how that is actually really good, you know, low-impact meat potentially. We want that information to get through to consumers. Great. I'm going to come to Pete, but before I do that, we've got another audience question and to ask about practical steps to encourage more people to use local veg schemes and move away from supermarkets. So, in addition to your comments on this, Abby, I'm going to come to you after Pete's responded, just to pose that as well. So, Pete, do you want to respond to some of those comments? Yeah, it's a really good point, Jenny, about markets and supply and demand. I think it's be fair to say that Compass certainly and Sodexo, they're now talking, to pick up Sarah's point, about plant forward menus, you know, and that's the framing they're using, the plant forward. They're talking about, you know, 75% of their plate being veg, all these sorts of, you know, changing what's normal, changing what people expect, putting, if there is a choice on the menu, they put the non-meat choice at the top of the menu rather than the bottom of the menu, where it used to be. So, all those things, they're really conscious of trying to make a difference there. But I think supply and demand is interesting if you, you know, if you look at the organic stuff in Denmark, you know, to begin with, the organic procurement sucked in imports and then the local market picked up. And to some extent, you know, they send market signals to producers in Scotland to go, actually, do you know what, you could produce more of this and that would be, you know, something that people would buy. So, even things like grain legumes, which we can grow in parts of Scotland quite well, you know, clava beans, you know, we don't grow because it's too much of a fath and we don't have a certain market for them. But actually, when you get market signals that people are looking for this stuff, then the markets can change. You know, you're always going to have cost production issues in some parts of Scotland for some crops. But I think that, and it's not just about local, it's also about sustainable. But I think we will see the caterers probably leading, leading away on some of these procurement practices. And then we need to make sure that public sector caterers are at least as good as private sector caterers and sometimes they're not. Sometimes they're very, very excellently good and sometimes, actually, they're buying the cheapest food and they're not even, you know, the fact that we can't always give away free school meals means that we've got a little way to go in terms of how we're doing our public food. Yeah, and as someone who, and so recently, also served as an education community in our local authority, I think that's a really fair point. You know, I think our young people, the choices aren't always the best for them in catering and we do need to look at that impact as well. Abby, give us your thoughts. Yeah, there's quite a few points to come back on here, isn't there? Where to start? So I was thinking, firstly, I was kind of thinking about Sarah's comments on, I guess, the plant-based versus meat-based dishes. Yeah, I don't think it is one or the other. I think it comes back to the education sort of, you know, the root of that again and kind of looking at the system as a whole. There is, as I said, you know, I think there's this danger of kind of vilifying farmers and kind of going, it's all your fault.  And as Pete said earlier, not all soils are made equal in the same way as not all animals are made equal. And certainly some parts of this country are definitely better for raising livestock on it. It could be done in a better way in a more regenerative way. And I think that's kind of what we need to focus on is kind of where we are raising our livestock. We need to make sure that it is done in a way that is beneficial for our ecosystems and our environment and that people know that that meter is available and know where they can get it if they choose to eat it. I do agree and take the point completely that we need to eat less of it as well. On the production and supply kind of issue, yeah, we don't grow anywhere near enough vegetables in this country in Scotland for us to be eating these plant-based plates that we kind of aspire to. Something like, along the lines of 185,000 hectares in Scotland is under a barley wheat and maize production. And the vast majority of that, if not all of it, is for either whisky and brewing, all for animal feeds and most of that whisky is for the export market. And that compares with about 18,000 hectares under vegetable production. And one hectare is about the size of one ruppent pitch just for the context for folks that don't know land stuff. So, yeah, there's a huge disparity around kind of what we currently produce and certainly that needs to change. I was told when I first moved to Dumfries and Galloway that you can't grow vegetables in Dumfries and Galloway, but I've got an acre of vegetables just over there. So it is possible to build soil and change the way we produce things by care for management. It's not the easiest right. And again, it comes back to farmers and food producers being supported to do that, not just through peer-to-peer support but also through financial mechanisms. And that includes vegetable production because that's a big piece of the vigil that's missing from the current Scottish Government consultation on the agricultural transition in Scotland. They're not really talking about vegetables, as far as I can see. So that really needs to come into it and vegetable producers need to be better supported. Thank you. We're coming into kind of our closing minutes. I'll take Jenny just on that point and then I'm going to kind of pose the final question for us. So, Jenny. I'm not looking for an answer to this. I'm just throwing it out there. Abery, you mentioned the fact that most of the huge amount of our land is used for the whisky industry and brewing industry. I'm just wondering how we're going to square that so going forward. Do we produce food or whisky and what that means for the Government in terms of economics? I'm not expecting an answer. It's just a comment. Thank you very much and a very relevant one to be fair as well. I think with COP on the very close horizon now and thinking about what governments have to do and indeed what we need to try and push corporations to do more. What are the incentives that might convince the industry and those industries that produce our food to make dramatic changes and to drive forward the change that we would want to see coming out of something like COP? That's a massive question, I appreciate that. Let's start with Pete. I don't want to go to too much policy, one career here, Paul, but one of the things Scottish Government is doing at COP is presenting the Glasgow Declaration of Food and Climate. That's a global declaration on integrated food policies and adopting integrated food policies at policies on health, on waste, on environment, on climate to tackle climate change. Scotland is presenting that at COP26 with over 100 cities from all around the world. That's sending a very strong message that we need sustainable food systems. Scotland is also bringing forward the good food nation bill, which fits really well with the EU law that's just coming out on sustainable food systems. At EU level, we're producing a law on sustainable food systems, and Scotland is very much marching in step with that with its good food nation bill. I think what people like Jenny have done over the years on sustainable food is actually bearing fruit. People are making that connection that we can have a sustainable food system, but we need policy action and we need to pull the levers a different way from the way we've been pulling them. We'll see an agricultural bill in the next couple of years, and there's every hope that we can change the way we invest in farmers so we really support them to do the right thing. I think there's cause for some optimism in here. Taylor, do you have some thoughts on COP and what we may want to see in terms of action? Well, I think that it's really exciting the way that we've got this resolution now, this amount of detail, I should say, on what the plans are from various countries, and obviously we're still digesting the announcements from yesterday, two days ago. I think that what's even more exciting for me is the level of public interest. What I would love to see is if we look, say, back five years about plastics, how consumers, citizens are actually driving policies of businesses and governments and supermarkets to reduce the amount of plastic they're using. Now, whether you agree with that or not, the fact is that citizens are driving change now in terms of what policies around food, including plastic packaging, I want to see that same level of enthusiasm with that same shift for climate policies around food. Instead of this sort of governments being so frightened of announcing new climate policies around food, I want to see the public driving that, and politicians in Scotland responding to that. The audience question there is about incentives. Is it about carrot or stick? Are we in that space where we want to talk about, from the point of view of legislation? Jenny, do you have any thoughts on that? Well, I think, as Sarah says, we do need to do something to incentivise whether or not it's coming from citizens pushing it or from industry helping it. I think that we do need both sides. I think that we are going to have incentives. We've talked about farmers, and as we're talking about reducing our meat consumption, how are we going to help farmers transition to something else? How are we going to make sure that industry, what happens within that process, can also make the environmental changes that are needed in the production side? I think that we do need some political support at all stages of the food system. Exactly as Pete says, it's got to be joined up. We need to bring all the departments together. If we're talking about taxing a particular type of food, the health and environment sectors are speaking about this together. Again, you've got this greater movement behind it, rather than one department talking about it and maybe not quite joining up with the other. Going back to COP, I really hope that food is high on the agenda of this. If we look at global food insecurity, what's down the line for us? If we're not talking about food within the COP, it's going to be a huge disappointment. Thanks, Jenny. I'm sure that everyone here will be watching Glasgow very, very closely over the coming weeks of COP. Particularly, I think, that absolutely food and sustainability has to do with that. Indeed, that invitation that I was talking about to a farm came off the back of one to share what was going on in farms ahead of COP. It was one of the first times that I went and was invited to visit, so it's already opening up doors that should have perhaps been opened—or gates, shall we say—that perhaps should have been opened a long time ago. Can I thank our audience for their contributions today? Before we close our event, I think that it's important to hear a final word from each of our panellists on this topic and on what they've heard so far. Each panel will just take about a minute, if they can, to give us their concluding remarks. I'm going to start with Abbie, and then I'm going to go to Pete, and then Jenny and Sarah in that order, so Abbie, over to you. Yes. Everything that I do within my work is trying to build collaborative movements. People are talking about the citizen-led and people-led movements, and I think that it's really important that our food systems change is very much people-led and citizen-led, and that we aspire to a future where everybody has equal access to affordable, good, healthy food. We aspire to a future where our food has been ecologically produced in a way that is beneficial for biodiversity and for our ecosystems, and to a future where everybody working within those food systems has just respected and paid a fair wage. I don't think that's too much to ask for, but rooting within that, I think, at the root of that anyway, is that I keep coming back to food education in a myriad of ways, both through connecting people with their food comes from understanding how food is produced both here and elsewhere in the world, and building that citizen-led movement, that food sovereignty movement that can help achieve people-led food systems change. I think it's so important. It needs to be a very true collaborative approach, not top-down, not co-operation-led, a collaborative approach that involves everybody. Thanks, Abby. Pete? Yeah, thanks. We've spent most of human history not having enough food, not being able to use enough food. In the last 30 years, that's changed, and we haven't come to terms with the fact that production is not the main problem, but nourishing people and not screwing up the planet is now the main problem. What we need to do is to realign the food system purposes that Abby talked about. What is it that we're trying to do here? It's not producing more. We're trying to realign that with nourishment, and that means ensuring access to a healthy, sustainable diet for everybody, everybody in Scotland, everybody in the UK, everybody globally. Therefore, we need business models for farmers and for food businesses that work to that new paradigm. That means levelling the playing field with things like taxes on methane, taxes on nitrogen, which means that those operators need to now work in a new world, but it's on a level playing field. We need to create those sorts of different rules of the game so that the farmers and the food businesses can actually realign what they do with nourishing people and looking after the planet. That's the goal. We're coming back to the title of this cutting-off food carbon footprint. I think that we need to be aware of the evidence that shows that we're not going to achieve the reduction in emissions that we need just by the production system. We can only achieve it if people change their diets as well. We've got a big challenge here in changing people's diet, and we can't underestimate how hard this is going to be, but we really need to think of some innovative ways of doing this. Just on another point, if you saw recently published that meat consumption is going down in most parts of the population, among young people it's slightly increasing, which is interesting that it's the sector of the population that we assume is more signed up to carbon issues, wanting to make a change, but there's obviously some resistance still there. We've got to look at how we can overcome this. The only way we can really do this is to have a proper joined-up approach. What is happening within the whole food system is driving some of these things, so we have to take a full food system approach to this. That's a global approach, not just within Scotland. We need to change what we're eating and what we're producing. We need to do that in a way that involves the stakeholders in the system, not just the citizens but also the farmers. We need to have this giant-up conversation with the quantitative information available. Even though young people are increasing their meat consumption, they are also more aware and more interested in changing their diets, motivated by climate change than older generations. There are two steps. One is education, to raise the importance of food climate policies. We need to have the policies themselves being brought in in a way that brings everyone together into that conversation, motivated by the demand for those policies. We need to do all those things in one go. Thank you very much. We must end there.  Thank you to our panel that I brought to you in partnership with the Rowett Institute at the University of Aberdeen. I thank Professor Sarah Brydo, Professor Jenny McDermid, Abbie Mordden and Pete Ritchie for giving up your time and taking part in the festival of politics. I also have a few plugs to do before we all go, just to remind everyone that there's a discussion on the very topical issue of male violence against women at 5pm today. Over the next few days, we'll be discussing everything from fast fashion to climate action, diversity in politics, radical solutions to poverty and resilient cities. Indeed, I see a message there about whether we should stop eating fish as well as the sessions. It's all very topical and interesting, and I hope that you can join more of those discussions as we go forward. Thank you very much and take care.


साथ साथ आप आन्सर्स भी लिखे वेज रहे हैं और उसके बात काफी जाडा वेर रहप्पी दब यो एबलें तो अच्टन्टेड आप आद और वह और और वह दाअन्सर्स आत ये शेंटें वाख तो बहुश so that's a good news. I hope cushion to continue. And keep enjoying the lectures and just try to enrich your content so that it can become a same changer for you in the last moment. In today's lecture we are going to discuss about again an important current affairs based news which is relevant from your international perspective. That is related to G20 and India has been now made President दुब कम आप प्मण्त्सलक होग़के होग कोई दुब look at the global level. इसे व्टुट अस्वालिए में करते है। अस्विल औस्वाड़। इसविल चुर्डेशगनगे बाहिट दीुकाबाल , अर्वाद. व्टुटवोट औत दी करते है। वह कराग्बादा आप और बज्बादिः के आपhhh वमनों सुच्सटाई उफ़ों सीस्री वाड़े और बहूँ क्यटी्। ऽए जी चलिएद्गिंना कि मेखच्छा कि चलिएगे था दर अप़िज्एड़्दा कि आअई। करिट प्रोन आवहू कछनी हूँ, चवूशै चञला रूवैंध कापकों आब्मrepresentation. चफी जात से बगन अग proceeded by India. गे जी चगर स्वि stack to the original of G20 as? या masse आपना लग 10 ज répond गो filled with this context.   और वह पर लगी बावे पहकर गया है कि दहाग मेंने जीब ओए वी अप प्यनेच विर्ठाई, जी़च़ितु,The Group 7 countries convened a meeting of the finance ministers of a select group of countries and the central bank governor from around the world to find ways to arrest the slowdown. तो जो एखे स्यम पलड़ीस गी बाख़े याग़ी कोई स्लोड़न ता? strategy on how can we fight the slowdown? उसे क्य से लग से लग सक्ते है? दिलबा़ी कै से एकशवग सोंगाय कोई में कर सक्टे है? यही बलाड अबजेक्तिप ता क्तीप सुआभ यक आद, ಎಟ್ರ್ಡಿದ್ಲು ಖತ್ಸ್ರೈ ಪ೑ಕುಮನ್ಲ ವಿಕಂದು ಸೋಸು ಎಟ್ರ ಸ್ರನ bestehtಆಟಂದ ಟೋ್ಯದು ದೆನ ಇಯಾರೈನತುietnamಂ ಜವಾರಂ ಕರ್ರೆ� filme ಮ್ಯನೆ ಎಯೆ ಸೋಿಗೆ ಕ್ಾಮ ತೋಮುದು ಏೊಂವು ಎಾ..ượngಕ್ kötü ರಂರನ್ತಾ the game would become meaningless otherwise stability can never be ensured at the international stage the global economy can never recover from this ancient financial prices and thats whyíll need to bring all the countries and collectively we have to fight this challenge in this context G20 became the normal discourse watch G20 countries have 85% of global GDP, 75% of global trade and the population of so high world come here and that's what is the significance of G20 in the recent times. Then let's talk about, ये देखो जी सेवन आपके ये कन्फ्रीज हैं तो सबसे नोस्त अद्वास कन्फ्रीज हैं ये सारे जी सेवन हैं जी सेवन के बात आगे जा के जी एप में रश्या को लिएं क्रूट की आगया था उसके बात रश्या को जी एप से रब लगता दिया तो जी एद बापको से जी सवन हो गया और इसी जी एप में ये लिएं दीज पन्फ्रीज अन वन योरप वूलियन तो ये मिल के अमारा जी तुएप यापका बनता हैं अइती लिएं बात लेएं चीन तूईगराम अगर लिएं नहीं था अप आप पे देखो जी तुछे पको ने लेंगा बातगा जी सैमें देखो जरबनी, एके, ख्रान, कनडा, जपार, इटली, उद्ली, योरज के सारे अदबान्ष दिक्षन्वान्भीठ most of the world GDP यही से आता ता but 1990 के बाग ये कंप्रीस बभी बहुतन तोने लगें ये इन कंप्रीस का interdependency इन कंप्रीस की अपर बडने लगा अप मान लोग कंप्रीस लेख चाईना कोलब्स करती है तो US में लेशेशन आसकता है, UK में लेशेशन आसकता है अज़ की बाग ग़ा आप बडने नहीं पीटुग। आजकी बाग नहीं बाग नहीं की बाग करोतो आस तो यग ता चाईना भी बाग नहीं गाए वुर्झें। यहे और तो चाईना देगा था, इस भी भी तो आप जो लगते है since that, since 1990s, these all countries, emerging market economies, middle income countries, in this picture, have started coming after that, I will talk about evolution, how evolution of G20 was one thing we talked about, in the context of Asian financial crisis, the G7 countries, they convened such a meeting after that G20 was formalized as a concept then the next big evolution of G20 came during the time of 2007 again the world was put under a major challenge you know in 2008, global financial crisis came again G20 was a big responsibility on the platform of how to stop this slowdown how to stop the world from going into recession and here G20 took a big step ahead the first meeting of G20 was between the finance minister and the central bank now the G20 was upgraded to a summit level means now all countries will get head of state annually like this year in September, all countries will get head of state in India so from being a forum at the level of minister, now the forum was upgraded to a summit level and along with that, to fight this whole crisis, all 20 countries, 19 countries and European collectively they synchronized their policies they collectively pumped trillions of dollars into the economy and due to that, the impact of global financial crisis till a lot, due to this group, international organization so here the next big leap came during the global financial crisis in 2007 first G20 summit was held in 2008 collectively those countries spending boost was worth of 4 trillions of dollars and due to that, the slowdown was reduced but this enthusiasm, this positivity this pro-activism was not there for a long time because now the international global order started to change China's strategic rise, the West started to become sceptical of China's intention NATO's expansion and Russia's annexation of Crimea due to that, Russia and West started to fight China and Russia's bond homie started to increase after this, G20 as an organization which was very active in 2008 and to take very important steps, it reduced the impact of global financial crisis so that was a major leap but its enthusiasm, its pro-activism was not there for a long time because again the great power politics started to come into the picture and today the result of this great power politics is that today the G20 summit is happening in India there are a lot of problems you know the war between Russia and Ukraine and how China is and Russia has come into the no limit friendship and due to that, today the G20 summit and the meetings of the G20 summit are happening all over India all of them are facing problems so becoming a G20 organization after that, taking a major leap in 2008 after this much, after that, G20 as an organization has failed to deliver up to that promise although still it is a very significant organization or in fact it is the only organization which is there to ensure the macro-economic stability at the global scale but the promises or but the expectations which are from G20 that has become, that has perished because of the great power politics and that great power politics is basically because of the China's strategic rise and the second NATO's expansion and Russia's counter-offensive measures such as the climate annexation followed by the Ukraine war so how does the G20 work? first of all, there is no permanent secretariat of G20 because the presidents of G20 are rotated every year so whichever country has G20's presidency that country's temporary secretariat is there so G20 does not have a permanent secretariat second, the G20 summit is annual every year it is a summit and who will be the president of that summit? it is a rotating presidency like India is in 2023 in 2022 there was Indonesia and in 2024 there will be Brazil this is called Troika these are three countries and these three collectively for example if India has to set an agenda of G20 this year so generally India does it with the help of Indonesia and Brazil so these three countries set an agenda of this year this is called the Troika group so G20 countries work in this Troika mechanism so here G20 summit is annual and leadership lies with the rotating presidency G20 has two parallel tracks G20 runs on two levels first track is finance track and second is Sharpa track the first concept is finance track and second is Sharpa track who participates in finance track finance ministers and central bank governors and who does Sharpa tracks Sharpa basically is one official person who represents the voice of the leadership for example if PM Modi who was the CEO of G20 so India has made him Sharpa so the basic work of Sharpa is to keep the position of the PM in front of such an international platform so Sharpa is an official person who is representing the head of state of that country so G20 works on two tracks finance track and Sharpa track finance track is the one finance minister and central bank governors and Sharpa track is the one who is appointed by every country the planning is called Troika Troika is one of the three countries and OECD is your advisory role in this and the G20 document is not legally binding so it is not legally binding document so you have to tell your answer about the origin of G20 and how G20 works so you have to tell some things after that if we talk about India and G20 so India you know that the president is done from December 1, 2022 to November 30, 2023 and if we talk about G20 logo again there are some factual information and there is a significance so you have to remember so this is our G20 logo so the G20 logo is dawn inspiration from the vibrant colors of India's national flag saffron white green and blue so this is our G20 symbol so this color combination is inspired from the flag of India it juxtaposes the planet earth here the planet earth and the planet earth is on the lotus so what does this signify the lotus is the national flower of India and the lotus represents growth amid the challenges so no matter the challenges the growth has to happen and why the planet is visible the planet means that it is pro planet so we want to consider and show that the development of planet happens we just want the humans to develop we also want the animals to develop we also want the ecosystem to develop so this is called the pro planet approach so you can see this symbolism here it juxtaposes the planet earth with the lotus India's national flower that reflects growth amid the challenges and what does the earth reflects the earth reflects India's pro planet approach to life one in perfect harmony with the nature below the G20 logo is India that has been written in the Devnagiri script what is the motto for G20 recover together and recover stronger why this motto is kept because after the pandemic there has been a huge economic loss for many countries many people have fallen below the poverty line there is an emerging food insecurity food crisis which is happening at the global level so out of this thing we have to emerge in a stronger manner recover together and recover stronger the final theme that is Vasudeva Kutumbukam that is one earth one family and one future so this is what India's significance India's culture India's civilization it is very much talks about the pro planet it talks about the development of everyone it talks about non-violence it talks about inclusive growth and the whole G20 is our agenda it talks about expressing soft power so India through G20 is trying to show that I am not being the president of G20 I do not want only the development of these 20 countries rather my objective is to ensure that this platform works for the entire humanity this works for the entire planet so this is the big message of India that we are not only meant by 20 countries we are meant by the whole world we are not meant by humans we are meant by every species in the world we are meant by the ecosystem we are meant by the environment we are meant by nature we are meant by everything so that is what India has tried to show by this logo, theme and motto after that it talks about details there are going to be 200 meetings in the 50 cities in 2023 we will have a new Delhi summit in September when all your head of states will come along with 19 countries European Union will come along with many countries India will have a special invite outside of G20 but India has called them as a special invite like India is called as a special invite so India has also called many countries as a special invite in this platform India's priorities are 5 priorities first priority is green development climate finance and life it is a lifestyle for environment it is a government statement document first priority is green development climate change how it is disrupting the existence of our life climate finance the developed countries which have spent to commit 100 billion dollars by 2025 till now by 2020 that has failed to completely materialize and life which you know prime minister Modi has been very much champion in terms of promoting this concept of lifestyle for environment where environment change is not or climate change has to not be arrested only by government civil society but to address the climate change there has to be a behavioural shift in terms of how we live our life so what is happening in India because of consumerism how to change the AC how to change the diet so what do Indians use we try to use as much as we can we try to reuse again once what we have used so that is what lifestyle for environment is basically all about then accelerated, inclusive and resilient growth India and world level has a big problem how to stop it that is why we will focus on MSMEs labour rights how to make value chains inclusive then third priority is accelerating progress on the sustainable development goals in this also our SDG goal we will try to achieve we have to achieve till 2030 and then the next one is technological transformation and digital public infrastructure you know that India although manufacturing is not so good but the emerging asset of India that is our digital public infrastructure you have adhar based payment direct benefit transfer so what is all this digital public infrastructure this year's economic survey also said that this is a very important development that how if we can make digital public infrastructure then we can counter many problems which the humanity is facing and this is India's forte that is why India should prioritize it more multilateral institutions for the 21st century you know multilateralism has become dead because the multilateral institutions are reflective of the post second world war world order they are not reflective of the current world order so now look at the United Nations Security Council there is no India member now how it is it is not possible that the most populous country the United Nations Security Council has no membership that is why Prime Minister Modi said that multilateralism needs to upgrade we have brought the principle of norms that we have to reform and we have to ensure that the current multilateral institutions reflect the current world order and does not reflect the world order which was there past 70-75 years before after that women led development so how do we know that women based discrimination and women based inequality are very prevalent at global level so women centric approach is very important after the pandemic so we have to ensure that women based priorities are also old build after that why it matters for India why becoming the president of G20 is a significant matter a very important benchmark which we have crossed a very important message for the world meaning what is the significance of G20 for India so first of all G20 presidency marks the beginning of Amrit Kaal when India from 75th year of anniversary in 2022 till the 100th year of anniversary and this 25th year that is becoming very important that is very important for India because in this 25th year India has to become a developed country so the concept of Amrit Kaal that in this 25th year we will be trying and the Amrit Kaal is starting from a very good note because just last year in 2022 it started and this year we have been made the president of the G20 so it marks the beginning of Amrit Kaal India can be the voice for the developing world you know that global south its problems are very different and India can use such platforms how we can keep the voice of global south we can focus on global goods global goods means blue economy global goods means how we can use space for the inclusive development so we can use these things so Modi has said again human centric globalization you know the impact of globalization many countries have got a lot of benefits and many countries are getting a lot of impact because of globalization so prime minister Modi has a very important concept that how we can globalize how we can globalize keeping in mind the human centric approach not in terms of capitalist centric approach free market, make money rather we have to ensure that globalization and the benefits of that and the way we conduct globalization the parameters of that whether that globalization is ensuring the human development or not so through this platform India will also try to promote human centric globalization and then again India can use such kind of platform from being a rule taker to being a rule maker so you know that all the global laws today, whether it is the united nation convention on law of sea whether it is our united nations whether it is our Paris agreement whether it is any other law in all these things the role of India in framing the law it is very less because India was not that powerful country India was not that economically prosperous country but now India because of its economic leverage because of its growing defense power India has become a very important stakeholder and now it is a time that India by this platform ensures that that now we will not accept the rule made by the west rather we will ensure that rules are made by incorporating our voices also so today the global challenges emerging challenges such as cryptocurrency such as cyberspace related challenges in those challenges how India can use such kind of platforms to frame such rules which is beneficial for India so that is why through G20 India can transit from rule taker to being a rule maker so all the intermediate challenges in Russia, Ukraine war and diplomacy through G20 platform is the right platform along with that India is also the president of G20 and SCO is also the president so the start of India is from such positive note that India is a confidence a model booster act and we will get the benefit of this in future where India will be much more proactive at the international level but what are the challenges that the G20 summit is not taking place in a very good time today's time is the geopolitical tensions in Russia, Ukraine economic slow down after the pandemic rising food and energy prices because of again Russia, Ukraine war and the long-term ill effects of the pandemic the pandemic which has supplied disruptions and other things inflation is increasing in the context of all these things for India to be the president of G20 it is very difficult because many challenges are acting together and we got to see these challenges when the foreign ministers meeting when the G20 foreign ministers meeting took place because there were many meetings in G20 summit level meeting in September but before that there would be a foreign minister meeting central bank governance meeting so the foreign ministers meeting no joint statement was released in that summit joint statement means the statement in which 20 19 countries and Europeans agree but joint statement was not released because two countries blocked it from passing they were concon, China and Russia because two paragraphs were like this in that joint statement there were 24 paragraphs there were 3 paragraphs and 4 paragraphs they were skeptical of Russia because Russia was told by aggressor this whole Russia-Ukrain war and that is why they blocked the joint statement and that is why a smaller version of that was chair, summary and outcome document instead of accepting joint statement basically a chair, summary and outcome document so it's a basically a milder version of a joint statement so that's why India which is optimistic in G20 they will do this and that so why didn't you do it here why you are not able to convince Russia and China to agree on a joint statement so that shows these limits of Indian diplomacy that shows the world is highly polarized that shows the limit of India's expectations from G20 and hence India for a very good opportunity that now India in the coming time when finally summit level meeting in September how to unite all these countries so that the summit level joint statement is released and it's not like again they blocked and joint statement G20 can't be released this year so that's why for India there is an eye opener how India will have to act in this similarly the G20 finance minister and central bank governor's meeting again joint statement was not released again the outcome was done after that what is the significance but despite of all these things despite of Russia, China blocking these things but still G20 as a platform if you analyze it overall so G20 platforms work in a very credible manner 95% of the agenda leave some other topics Russia, Ukraine, war and other things but most of the things the G20 countries have shown convergence so that's a very great fun for Indian diplomacy there were some limits Indian diplomacy has ensured that on the issue of health, global economic recovery on the issue of Covid pandemic on the issue of environmental and climate conservation on the issue of a consensus we were able to make it and that's why all these countries met and made it and also when the G20 finance minister's meeting you also know that the crisis of the debt crisis so how the debt vulnerabilities in emerging market and developing economies how globally G20 countries and all the central bank governors and finance ministers how they can fix the debt crisis of those countries so basically what I mean is what is the significance of G20 and the presidency of India although there are some problems but still overall if you look India has been very much successful in addressing the global challenges although some geopolitical issues like related to the war related to the great power politics not being able to make it but in most of the 95% objective India has showed that its diplomacy delivers to the expectations what is the way ahead now the summit will come in September what should we do Prime Minister Modi has written a very good thing you can write it in your own way we should not allow issues that we cannot resolve together to come in the way for those we can means the issues we can resolve we should do that we should not be able to do that because we fight over the issues with which we cannot resolve means the things we cannot resolve because of those things we should not have that impact because we cannot resolve this Russia-Ukraine bond that does not mean that we should not agree and fight over the food insecurity we should fight over the energy security so that's what Prime Minister Modi says and then second Prime Minister Modi says that he hope that their meeting in the land of Gandhi and Buddha he inspired the G-20 delegates to focus not on what divides us but on what unites us so that's again a very categorical message for Russia and America which is funding the Ukraine war that boss you are in the land of Gandhi and Buddha so you should understand that more than differences we all have convergences or because of this we need to fight over the food insecurity so that's what the country should follow so that the summit in September will be a successful event and that's again very important for Indian diplomacy also and India to emerge as a global rule maker at the international stage also questions will be easy to come to discuss about the G-20 you also mentioned significance for India so that's not going to be a difficult question it's going to be an easy question so I hope that G-20 it's a very current topic but if you will ask in the mains then you will write till here chair's outcome joint statement so that was again a very important point you will have to write it in the answer so in this way we have covered G-20 again we will meet with a new topic if you like the lecture then please like share and subscribe and feel free to write this answer send it to me live one to one checking will be provided next day when you will mail thank you and all the best wishes don't forget to like share and subscribe to our channel and press the bell icon to never miss an update