Five years experience, fell off the rig for about once off the loadage, but it was 21 feet that he fell and I got to help load him on the ambulance that morning so it didn't kill him, it should have killed him, but it pretty much ended his all field career. I had a guy five years ago go up in the derrick on a winter day, been in the derricks for 30 years. So he goes up, he starts laying out on the board and has heavy gloves on on a cold winter day in a coat. He doesn't attach himself to the to the derrick safety belt. He reaches out for the first stand and falls out of the derrick. It's important to train on it just in case something was to happen. You gotta make sure you do it the right way. That way you can secure yourself and secure the person that you're coming out if you're getting down from the derrick. Coming down, coming down! You gotta watch out for these guys. It's very dangerous what they do. They have a hazardous job and anytime they're above six feet anywhere on the drilling rig they need to be wearing their fall protection at all times. You gotta make sure you put that belt on, you know. That's the main thing when you go up there is make sure you have that belt on you. You definitely need fall protection. Anytime you leave the ground until you get back on the ground. You do need fall protection. It's a simple fact that a gust of wind get off balance, lose your balance, get dizzy, something. You have nothing to catch you except that fall harness.  Well if you have your SLR on which is a saw your block it is gonna only you're only gonna fall eight inches. There's a good chance of taking a slip while they're climbing the ladder and the way the SRL works they'll fall maybe of just a few inches and then it'll catch them. Of course the derrick is the primary concern that's true but we also have floor sometimes they're two foot high, sometimes eight foot high, sometimes ten so we also have sometimes tanks on locations that may have stairways or ladders that fall protection would be required. We use fall protection on a daily basis out here whether it's just cleaning, riding in a man basket, rigging up rigging down. You know on any of the tanks or anything like that anymore the guys are using they don't use ladders in more but more or less hydraulic lifts and they're still strapped in and when they are climbing ladders are using the climbing devices also. Underneath the substructure we have some walkways that go by the BOP. We have a secondary fall protection where they clip in with their lanyard and it just protects them you know from falling above six feet. Like above the dog house above the parts house the oil house the light house anywhere on top of the rig where we have to run the electrical wires. Now basically all of ours is putting down a derrick and and you know that's a that's another requirement that's a hundred percent tile anything over six foot and if my guys are climbing up and down a tank they need to we furnish a body harness with two hooks that they can they can go up and down a tank with. We always inspect their equipment make sure it's in good working condition. You're going to go all the way around your belt, you have your shoulder straps, you're going to check all your clips make sure they're not damaged or broken once again you're checking the stitches these are adjustable once you put the belt on this one is spring loaded so you're going to make sure all of those are moved and when you lock the belt in you want to make sure that it's going to snap it's not going to come loose when you're in the air okay you're going to go around check all your clips all your buckles they're not broken or loose or damaged turn your belt over look at the back your waist straps aren't broken once again checking stitches any kind of abrasions any damages or anything cuts you go to the bottom this goes under your legs this has to be in place this is what's going to hold you up yeah every every morning I have to you know check my hornet's bell everything is okay you know keep clean check it you're not affected just put it on and go to work you know next step I go and check my SRL you know works put it on and go to work you know try to work safety every time we have tailgate safety meetings every morning this is one thing we talk about is our safety equipment they inspect it every day and if anything is torn, punctured, messed up or whatever that is completely eliminated that day when we bring out a brand new one our safety harnesses and stuff that we have the each the derrick man wears it has to be perfectly fit if it's too big he can slide out of it it's too loose it'll fall off of him if it's too tight he's very uncomfortable check your harness make sure all the tags and everything's still in place you gotta make sure it fits you you gotta make sure it fits around your legs or you're gonna be real sore from your legs if you're gonna put them real if you get them too tight your legs will be real sore when you come down so you gotta make sure you get a little slack on it as far as a new derrick hand before we could have anybody go up there anyways we have to they have to go through an observation and we do a evaluation on every hand whether it be a floorhand or anybody goes up to the derrick's the learning how to communicate verbally and by your motions is very important in putting a crew together that will work together yeah it's all about teamwork i mean when you get a crew that works together so good and you have less chance of anything go wrong we have to do it every day he's watching out for each other and caring about who you work with we watch him as he go up we make sure he's in the right place he's supposed to be and make sure he's tied off like he's supposed to be and we don't move nothing on the ground with any lines unless we make sure he's out of the way so he does not get caught up wrapped up in anything we usually pull on our harnesses like if we're going to move and into a different situation or set a different spot we always makes we always put a put a little tension and pull into that little harness that's in the back so and if i don't do that the guys down at the bottom will always make sure that i double check it and they'll yell at me or they'll if the pipe's up there they'll tap on it and make sure i reach around hang on to it yank on it do whatever i have to and then if i have to switch different positions they'll watch me do it and before they even start anything else it's already done they know that it's done it should start with the driller the driller should he's kind of the lead safety man on a crew because he's he's their boss he hires them he brings them out and but everybody's got to look after one another i mean and that just takes time together whether it's day one you've got to you've got to watch out for the the new hire just like you do that dary can has been with us for 30 years you want to get it done and we're paid to get things done but taking a couple extra minutes you know we'll save it right to the hospital and an ambulance it takes everybody to do a good job and make sure everybody goes home because you know you don't want to have an accident out here and have your friend get killed or something and i mean it takes everybody we'd hate to see an accident we'd have to we'd hate to go to somebody's house and tell me you know your dad didn't make it come on because he wasn't following his procedures for his work 100 toff means that you're going to get to go home at the end of the day one slip and it can be the difference between life and death and we always want to make sure that the young kids at home that dad comes home to them you know if you lose that income you know you don't get that much money for workman's comp by the time you get it going and stuff it'll take a while you know so it's better to do it the right way instead of doing it the wrong way or the easy way you know what i'm saying and i always wanted my fall protection there i mean there wasn't no ifs ands or buts about it i got three boys and a and a wife at home that are counting on me to come home every day wear the right ball protection it can save your life take pride in your job work safe don't risk your job your health your family the ability to take care of them please always wear your fall protection


I'd like to let you know that we have online interpretation in French and in Spanish. So if you need that, please click on the globe icon. The lower part of your Zoom window and select the relevant language. My name is Richard Saluzas and I'm an emeritus professor at the University of Twenton in the Netherlands. My background is in urban planning and GIS and disaster risk reduction. And I'd like to welcome you all very much to this webinar on building climate resilience through inclusive land governance. This is the second webinar in a responsible scaling series which is initiated by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, RVO. LandAC and the Land Portal Foundation as part of the Land at Scale program. And Land at Scale, if you don't know it, is a Dutch land governance support program which is financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and it's managed by RVO. And today's seminar is really pertinent because today the COP is beginning in Dubai so you can imagine that there's a lot of attention for climate related issues. And land governance is one of the most important ones. It's a critical area that's gained a lot of importance in the context of global climate challenges and sustainable land use practices. So we're going to be talking about some of those today. We will not be able to deal with every aspect of course but we will do our best to cover some important issues. I'd like to add a few logistical messages about the webinar before we get started. We're streaming live on Zoom and other platforms and please also note that you can add text messages through Twitter or X as it's now called. I'm not sure if it's called tweeting anymore or texting or Xing but in any case if you can use the land portal Twitter accounts and the hashtag we are using today is hashtag land at scale. Maybe that information is available in the chat or reading. We have created a social media account, a kit for this event and that's already been shared with you through the chat as well. If you have any questions that you would like to pose to a specific panel member or to the panel in general or to myself please use the Q&A box at the bottom of your screen and we will do our best to answer as many questions as possible during the webinar. Finally in the interest of transparency I should add that today's session is being recorded and if you will receive the link to the video afterwards. Also there will be an article published on the land portal website with the key messages from this webinar. Now please allow me to introduce the speakers on our panel and we have a great panel for you today to discuss these issues. They come from diverse backgrounds and they represent key changemakers on this topic of the donor community, development sector, practitioners, government and academia. First I'd like to introduce Kai van der Forstenbos, who is a policy officer at Climate Affairs and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands. Then I would like to introduce Ms Ombreda Tempra and Ombreda is a human settlements officer specialised on land governance and housing, land and property rights at the United Nations Human Settlements Programme UN Habitat. She leads UN Habitat's Global Portfolio on Land and Conflict and also the Arab Land Initiative in the Maina region. We also have Mr Ombreda Murangui who is a physical planner at the Department of Physical Planning in the Ministry of Lands Housing and Urban Development in Uganda and he has a lot of experience on land and housing issues. And there's a background in spatial urban planning. We also have Bernardo Palomando who is a assistant professor at Leyden University College and at the Van Vollenhove Institute in the Netherlands. He is a researcher and practitioner in land tenure, law, lawmaking and development and he's currently researching the nexus between climate change response and land rights, so exactly on the topic of his webinar. And finally, as a sort of discussant to reflect on the discussions of the webinar, we have Professor Shuai Loasa who is a professor of Urban Resilience and Global Development at the International Institute for Social Studies in the Hague. He also holds a part-time chair at the University of Toronto in my former department. Shuai Loasa was also a coordinating lead author of the IPCC Working Group 3 Chapter 8 on Urban Systems and Human Settlements and he was lead author of the IPCC Special Report on Land and Climate Change which is one of the more recent reports. Again, very much directed to the topic of this webinar. Last week, we launched the study Land Governance for Climate Resilience which I was amongst others, one of the authors of which you might say I was the lead author and there were many, many contributions including from Land Act partners but also particularly from more than 10 people from four different Land and Scale projects in Mozambique, Uganda, Colombia and Somalia. And two of those we'll be talking about more specifically, I will talk more about specifically in my own presentation and we will have some field, at least one field from the others. This study shed light on critical global challenges by reviewing the nexus between Land Governance and Climate Resilience and it's combined with this analysis of these four case studies. Before we get started, I would also like you to ask you to join in the discussion and as a warm up in practice, we're going to be using the Mentimeter tool and Lisetta May from RVO has just shared this tool. So we're just going to, we'll be asking you occasionally to answer a couple of questions and the first question is very easy is simply to identify which country you come from. So where are you currently located? If you could fill in your response to that question, then you will know how the tool works and we can proceed with the main content of the webinar. I'll just give you a few minutes to respond. Looks like many people are putting in location details in the chat and not using the Mentimeter but is it possible? They said, I don't know whether we could share the QR code again, someone's asking for it. Put it in the chat or something. See, we're getting some updates. I don't think we're anywhere near the 790 people who signed up yet, but we're getting some impressions of this. But I think we might just leave it here for the time being. Thank you very much for those who've added their location details and either through the chat or through the Mentimeter. We will be doing a couple of other Mentimeter surveys later in the webinar. So please try to make use of that if possible rather than using the chat for those responses in the future. Allow me now to present the results of the study, at least some of the highlights from the study. I won't be able to go into all the details. To do that, I will need to share my screen, my mouse, apparently stuck at the end of it. My apologies for that. Maybe Neil can edit that out in the final video recording. Anyway, it's my pleasure anyway to make a quick presentation about the Building Climate Resilience through an inclusive urban land governance study, which is part of, which is the basis for this webinar and as part of the land scale program. This thematic study was essentially conducted to look at the nexus between land governance and climate resilience and to really just to try to investigate in what ways climate change is expected to affect the different territories and communities of some selected projects and to determine how land governance could contribute to effective climate change mitigation and adaptation and therefore to increase climate resilience of those communities. We've looked at four case studies, one in Colombia, which we will have a video later on in the second part of the webinar. I'm from Uganda, which will be the topic of main, we will have a video on the first part, most are being in Somalia. In this presentation, I will say a little bit more about the Uganda case and the Somalia case as well. And you can see at the bottom of the slide a lot of the names of the various people who contributed to the production of this report to a lot very thankful for. One of the important issues or the connections between land governance and climate change are sort of summarized in this little diagram, which is coming from David Mitchell and Darren McAvoy in a report that they produced also for UN Avatar in 2019. And what's important is that you see at the top part of the diagram there's the issue of securing land tenure rights. So this is the part of the land governance puzzle you can say is a lot of tangent insecurity affecting different communities and individuals across the world. And the other component of land governance that's shown in this diagram is effective land use planning and control. And the two are very much highly connected to one another. What we've, what we see in many, many countries, and including the cases that we've looked at here in this particular project, and which we're land at scale is working is that the capacity for land use planning and control is very much limited by lack of resources in the public sector side, but it's also limited by a lot of uncertainty and insecurity around land tenure rights. So who owns the land and who is responsible for the land for which plans etc are being made. So that affects very much the ability to not only to think about sustainability of land use and to regulate land use in such a way that it will be sustainable, the way land is used will also offer communities the capacity to decline and resume. By that we mean the ability to resist, absorb, respond to and recover from climate emergencies or climate related hazards of different times. In the report and also in this presentation, I will not talk too much about climate hazards or climate disasters as such, but in full climate and attribute all climate related hazards to climate change because that's a very different issue in itself, but we do know that many communities are affected by various types of climate related hazards. One of the issues in the land at scale project and what we see in this study is that by improving tenure security and clarifying who owns water and building institutions which enable communities to plan and manage their lands better, they are better able to reduce their vulnerability and exposure to climate hazards. It strengthens their ability to respond and impact and allows the possibility there are many ways where we can try to integrate more scientific approaches to understanding land management practices and climate issues with, together with, traditional knowledge. And the other, the fourth component of this little picture is the disaster risk reduction box. And what we see of course is that many climate hazards can turn into disasters of different types. So there is a strong overlap between climate resilience and disaster risk reduction practices, but that doesn't mean to say of course that all disasters are climate related. What is important to realise though is that in thinking about land use planning and control and trying to manage their spatial, spatially in a sustainable manner, it's important to think very much about the risks from climate related hazards but also from the other types of hazards which might be affecting a particular territory. One of the basic diagrams you say which is coming from the IPC report, that's sort of close to capture, the general picture is that we can talk about climate related risks which are determined by hazards, vulnerability and exposure to different types of hazards. But what we're trying to focus on in terms of land governance and climate resilience is what types of adaptation and mitigation actions can the community come up with and how to manage those, what sort of governance frameworks and institutions are necessary to make those responses effective. Part of that puzzle will be directed at emissions control, might be directed at emissions control, although in the case of demanded scale projects a lot of it is not really about greenhouse gas emission reduction. Some of it is related to carbon capture through reforestation programmes but most of the actions are directed more at adaptation rather than climate mitigation. And the two functions, two boxes are more or less integrated in some way. So what's important for communities when they are tackling their tennis security and their planning issues is that they need to have a good understanding of the three aspects because what they are trying to do would be to come up with they need a good understanding of what are the climate hazards affecting the area, what is the current vulnerability of the communities and their infrastructures and the environment and which are the areas which are more or less exposed or more severely exposed to particular types of hazards. And only when we have a good more complete picture of that can you really understand all the different options that might be available for either reducing the hazards or reducing exposure or reducing vulnerability to climate hazards and there are various ways that that can be done. I'll talk about two of the projects as I said. So the first one is the Boutal-Age project in the Boutal-Age district in Uganda. This is one of the districts where projects are going on on the land at scale. And here the main issue is the sustainable management of wetlands which are being encroached upon by different communities and there's a very strong community driven approach to the management of the wetlands as well as the management of the surrounding areas which the community is also responsible for. So through community workshops, some photographs you see here, very simple mapping techniques, it's possible to build up a more complete picture of who is on what, where are the problem areas, what are the and how is expansion of communities into the wetland areas affecting the sustainability of the whole ecological environment and ecological system of the wetland. That's important for this community itself but it's also important for communities which are downstream as well or perhaps across the other side of the wetland to share the wetland. What we've tried to do with the project for each of the case studies is to build a use of causal loop diagram approach to build a sort of very highly simplified picture of the system. I don't know what's happened but my system is shut down. Can you still see me? Can you still see me? Yeah, it's all working fine. Sorry, I'm going to have to make a change in my settings and my screen. Can you still see me? Yeah, it's still working fine. Oh, well I don't see it. You're going to have to do a bit of editing later, Neil. Okay, I've restored something so at least I can see what I'm talking to. So we tried to make these causal loop diagrams to explore what are the different relationships between and issues that are affecting the community. So in this diagram, and I'm not going to go into all the details, we see some blue boxes which are referring to sort of climate related issues and all the brown boxes are representing things which are coming out of the land governance actions of the particular which are being instituted under the project. So for example, the key issue you see is wetland encroachment, you see it in the middle of this diagram and what you can see from the diagram is that there are an enormous number of connections, issues which are somehow affecting the issue of wetland encroachment. So the project itself has tried to build the capacity of local community organisations to make plans for the wetlands which will be more sustainable, but also to implement them. So it's built up institutions, local community-based institutions and frameworks which enables them to seek a more sustainable development pattern which would make the whole territory much more resilient to current climate hazards but also to future climate issues. And they do that not independently but they do it very much in cooperation with the district planning offices. So it's that relationship, it's really important to have that relationship between what the community is doing and trying to achieve and to align that very much with what the government, how the government sees the planning and the management of such territories because only then can you really say something, increase the tennis security in the area and it's clear that the government supports it. One of the other projects I want to talk about very briefly is the Baidua city in Somalia. This is a project which has been running for several years and Baidua for those who don't know it is a city in the southwest state of Somalia. A few years ago it had a population of about 70,000 people and now it has a population of 700,000 people and it's still growing. Why has the population increased? Primarily because of climate related issues. A long term and widespread drought in Somalia combined with the effects of political conflict as you probably are aware Somalia has been in a sort of a lot of political unrest for many, many years already and this is driving the migration of people and it's forcing them to locate in settlements around the Baidua city which creates all sorts of problems. For the Baidua case we also try to make a similar type of analysis. What you can see is that there are a lot more blue boxes so there are challenges related to flooding in this case but also heat waves and drought, a little bit more complexity perhaps than in the previous case. What we also see is there are a lot of these brown boxes as well. So in this particular project it was important for the project partners to build from scratch almost new institutions given the current more or less the collapse of government services and public institutions due to the ongoing long term crisis there in that country which makes it increasingly more complex perhaps than the previous case but a lot of the actions are centered around how to cope with such a massive number of internally displaced people, households. Most of them are women and children because very often the men remain in the rural areas as long as possible and they follow perhaps later on their wives and families to Baidua as soon as once the situation in their original place of residence becomes completely unsustainable. That creates all sorts of problems and one of the issues that is seen in this particular case is how to align the provision of public land and services for internally displaced populations, this large number, but also how to deal with the very large number of private landowners who are also offering land and sometimes shelter on a rental basis through sort of more informal processes and how to make sure that those provision of land and housing is also sustainable and safe. This has become the importance of looking at climate issues in the Baidua case has become very obvious. Recently at the beginning of November there was heavy rainfall which broke the drought in the area and caused widespread flooding affecting many of the settlements for IDPs, both those offered by private landlords as well as those offered by the public, by the government. So it points to the fact that how important it is to, when looking at land issues in such environments to really understand very well which are the hazardous areas, what areas are likely to be exposed and try to avoid investment in those areas in terms of setting up housing in the States for example because in the long term that may not be sustainable and you may be putting people who have been traumatised perhaps by a massive migration and a separation of their family putting them through recurrent experiences of flooding in the future which will not help them at all. Looking at one of the things that we tried to do in the study and I just picked out a few of these response options. We were looking at the report which I mentioned earlier from IPCC, the one that Professor Lewasa was involved in. Richard, sorry, I don't want to interrupt you but just to keep note of the time. Thank you, sorry. I'm almost finished. In fact, I'll skip this. You can look in the report. There's a couple of key findings I'd like to bring out and this may be good triggers for some of the discussion with the panel. The importance of having clear frameworks and strong institutions and this is both for the public sector but also for community-based institutions and looking at and trying to establish positive relations between the government and communities themselves. The importance of mainstreaming when looking at land governance issues look also at issues related to climate resilience but look also at issues related to poverty, to gender, etc. So land governance is not just singling only about climate issues and to try to avoid book proscenities and try to avoid options which are likely to be counterproductive. And in that sense, adopting a systems perspective and trying to understand how the different relations work is very important. There's a lot of issues which we saw related to data and mapping. In many of the contexts, there's insufficient data or the data is not very reliable. This data is necessary both for the hazards as well as for vulnerability and exposure and the experiences of local community members can be extremely useful in providing such data. It's important in all of the contexts, I think, to better anticipate the effects, possible impacts of displacement and migration. Sometimes it's on a large scale but sometimes it's also just affecting a few, relatively few households that might need to be displaced for example from a wetland such as in Uganda or in some other situations. The impacts of displacement should not be underestimated and it's really important to think those through carefully and make sure that people do not suffer setbacks or their increase of vulnerability as a result. The realistic about community-based approaches, they will rarely work well alone. They need to be supported by government and other actors and consider the implications for scaling especially as well as temporary. And especially for water-related hazards, a watershed perspective is really needed to fully understand the problems in an effective manner and respond to them. That's the case for Uganda case where we're looking at one wetland. There's also an upland which should be considered and we see it also in the Somalia case where the city of Baidawa is located as part of a watershed and what happens upstream is really significant, is very important for what happens, the impact of flooding in the city itself. Okay, that's all I would like to say so I will stop sharing my screen and I think we can move to the next part of the program which would be where we invite our panel to say something about a couple of key questions. So with that, is my screen still being shared? I'm sorry. Yeah, we go back to the panel. So I'd like to invite first Mr. Murungi and Obrata Tempra to kick off the discussion in the panel part of the program and I'd first like to ask Mr. Murungi from... Oh, sorry. We're going to show the video first. My mistake. I think we're going to have a quick look at a video from Uganda first. Neil, can you take care of that? Just a second. I'm sorry for the... We have a short video from the Uttaleja project in Uganda. Welcome to Uttaleja district in the eastern region of Uganda where the lush landscapes are both a source of life and a delicate ecosystem and a threat. 40% of the district's land is covered by wetlands which are essential to the survival of its communities. As the population grows and land becomes more scarce the wetlands are facing unprecedented challenges. The conversion of large portions for commercial and small-holder agriculture has led to biodiversity loss and permanently altered the delicate balance of these vital ecosystems. Climate change aggravates the situation bringing more severe flooding and droughts. The resulting disruptions impact not only the wetlands but also the lives and livelihoods of the communities that depend on them. The land at scale intervention aims to restore the wetlands by promoting inclusive and climate-smart wetland management practices implementing participatory, proper and gender-responsive approaches. Activities like mapping wetland users' rights and conflict resolution create a sustainable framework for wetland use. Collaborational local communities ensures that the unique needs, concerns and knowledge of the people are woven into the fabric of wetland management planning. The lessons learned from this community-based approach are profound. Clear wetland user rights instill a sense of responsibility and accountability fostering a community more inclined towards sustainable use and protection of their resources. The participation of wetland users in the planning processes ensures decisions are not only relevant but are also more readily accepted and implemented. Wetland governance structures play a vital role. They disseminate knowledge, empower local communities and ensure adherence to rules guiding daily affairs. In the heartland of Butaleja the community is taking charge of planning, managing and conserving their wetlands. Through this approach they work towards balancing economic development, social equity and environmental protection for sustainable wetland management. Right, that little video will show a little it's a little bit more insight into the situation in Butaleja district in Uganda. Now I'd like to invite first panel member Mr. Murungi to say something about the questions for the first couple of questions we have which is how do you think we can best facilitate the cooperation between local communities and governments to balance ecological, economic and social interests in a fair and just manner and to talk about your experiences in doing so in the from the government of Uganda. Yep, thank you Richard for that introduction all our viewers, whatever you are. As government of Uganda through the Ministry of Lands Housing and Development we are supporting the implementation of land at scale project through customer land registration and land use planning and we are doing this with the Global Land Tool Network to work with the UN Habitat from Richard's presentation and experience he showed I have a few points to share with our viewers for us to be able to foster this particular cooperation between local communities and local governments to balance ecological, economic and social interests in a fair and just manner. One of the areas that needs to be highlighted is the aspect of awareness creation. Notice that if the communities are aware of their responsibilities if they are aware of the laws that govern the use of these ecological spaces that we are talking about it will facilitate the mutual understanding between the authority and the communities. In this case we are talking of a responsible use of these spaces which are clearly provided within a regulatory framework especially in our context in Uganda for one to use the wet land they have to use it in a regulated manner in a way that antagonise the ecological integrity of the space and so communities raising that awareness and I try to emphasize that this is not only at the community level it's really cutting across the different actors. So one area that is critical and that has been pivotal in this particular intervention has been creating awareness with awareness if somebody is aware of what they are supposed to do I think it really simplifies the level of engagement so that one is one highlight and I say as a highlight it is a continuous process and we can't have or at all we cannot create awareness just once and we expect that as a success no it is a continuous process and of course just beyond the project score as government we have the responsibility to create that awareness at all levels near the point that I can't lead to this particular cooperation how we strengthen this cooperation especially for the communities that are working within these spaces is the aspect of capacity strengthening the capacity of local governments. In the highlights of Richard I mentioned of course that are responsible for registration at the local level have to be in a position of guiding the communities and in the same context of capacity they are especially for this project there are agencies which were created at the community level the management with wetland management the committees and the like now as government we operate in a decentralized system of governance where planning the powers to plan and implement are involved in other words the respective local governments should take charge to guide the planning and implementation in the context of this particular project and the experience the communities of course initiated or were fully involved in the planning of these spaces what the responsibility of the local government is beyond just the project scope is to ensure that the plans which the communities together with the the local governments are integrated in the mainstream planning rather in the mainstream plans purpose level sustainability but also for legitimize some of the processes so just to share the experience the wetland management plans which were prepared one adopted by the council the local government in understanding that these will be integrated in the the local government plans in the future as the budgeting and locating resources to further scale up some of these interventions in other areas where this particular project I think this would be an opportunity but also the experience from this local government again can be in other words the other sub counties as you notice the wetland is the trans boundary those local governments that are within or sharing the same resource can again learn and share experiences from this so strengthening the capacity so that the local governments and the land registration and the position to first of all implement similar initiatives beyond the project scope and it creates the could you wrap it up fairly quickly please so the other point is to do with the incentives and in this case we are talking purposeful support and scaling up the community initiatives the view here is to motivate communities to adopt a sustainable practice of use of this space I would want to share an experience recently from a conference on land policy in Africa which was in the suburb and this is particularly to do with in Kenya where a statutory body this was one of the sessions where the presentation was on statutory bodies as tools of overcoming land fragmentation in the case of rice tenure in Kenya in other words the key highlight from that presentation was to do with incentives the communities besides the rice estate the communities that were surrounding that particular estate were able to engage in the same production because of an incentive and we are looking at this in terms of infrastructure development for instance that can support this community in their production and others I will stop for now, thank you for listening Thanks Ronald what I'd like to do then is to ask Ombretta to reflect on the same questions but from her experience working for UN Habitat as part of the GLTN network and also as within the Arab region Arab land initiative Sure Good afternoon everybody and thank you for having me in this important discussion so I will answer this question from a regional perspective drawing actually from the findings of the report on land governance natural resources and climate change in the Arab region that we recently published together with the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies So just a few Sure I will try but then it might be tricky I don't know if you can see it Not yet, but maybe it's coming But if you don't mind I can just leave it because sometimes it takes a lot of time to come up and we waste time Thanks So just a few figures to contextualize the land and climate nexus in the region The region is heavily impacted by climate change Actually large tracts of land are nearly inhabitable in summer because of high temperatures Fresh water scarcity is a major problem in 18 out of the 22 countries 92% of land is hyper arid and 70% of arable land is degraded which of course contributes to agricultural decline and hunger 181 million people more than 1 in 3 person are food insecure and inequalities are rampant 3 quarter of arable land is controlled by industrial corporation contributing to the impoverishment and displacement of small holder farmers rural women and girls are particularly vulnerable adding to the fact that the region has the highest gender gap globally Things are not necessarily better in urban areas 60% of population is urban but a quarter lives in slum confirming that actually poverty and inequality exist both on urban and rural area So in short there are critical challenges in almost every aspect of land governance and you will have to agree with me that this is actually completely unsustainable and indeed the region is really unstable Since 2011 11 countries were shaken by protest, revolution or conflicts There are 40 million migrants and 22 million forcibly displaced people and counting with the appalling situation evolving in Palestine but also in Sudan which is the bread basket for the region particularly after the collapse of Syria which was also the other bread basket So I just want to show you a couple of graphics from this report that hoping you can see them illustrate with this connection we see that climate change has some immediate manifestation that you see in red in the inner circle and then in orange you see the impact on people and planet of this manifestation Now without going in detail if you look at poor land governance the manifestations again in red in the inner circle are slightly different but the impact on people and planet is very much the same and to conclude as well rising inequality have again a specific manifestation but have the same type of impact on people and planet loss of biodiversity displacement, livelihood decline food insecurity etc So getting back to your question how to balance economic, social and ecological interest I want to highlight four points first we must address these three aspects together to make a change climate operating on climate resilience, land restoration and protection of environment two inequalities to the promotion of human rights gender equality and enacting social protection policies and then land governance reform that needs to be supported by accompanying land administration solution and particularly fit for purpose land administration has proven very effective for example to foster this positive collaboration between local communities and governments secondly we must empower local community, local civil society national land practitioner academia so that they can be more informed, authoritative and therefore be powerful interlocutor of governments and they can represent a variant interest at play so they'll be able to sustain also climate action over the years because this going to be a long-term engagement and from our side from the international community we can foster this empowerment through the, to promoting the documentation and dissemination of local governance local knowledge create local capacity and support local initiative both technically and financially thirdly we should create space for multistakeholder dialogue evening out the power and knowledge imbalances among the different actors and lastly we must create an enabling environment calling for the respect of international law and the prevention and resolution of conflicts because they diverse attention and waste resources that could be otherwise used to address inequality and climate change which are the true challenges of the coming years so with this chair back to you thanks very much Alberto that's very insightful we have a we would like to pose at a open up the questionnaire again so Lizette I think you can share the link and we would like to we would welcome your responses to what you think are the critical factors to consider when facilitating cooperation between local communities and the government so you can just use the QR code there and you can add your responses via the Mentimeter and Neil just put in the chat also a link to the menti.com site where you can share your responses maybe Richard in the interest of time I can keep this open even if I don't share my screen but we move on to the next one and people are encouraged to keep submitting that's fine that's a very good idea we are running a little bit behind schedule so the Mentimeter will stay open as Lizette mentioned so you can still use it and add your comments and of course you can put more than one right so there's more than one issue that might be relevant with that we can start we can move on to the the second part of the webinar and we have another video it's a video from Colombia we would like to show it first so I think Neil is going to make that available while we wait for one second I'm doing it Neil is going to be doing that and don't forget you can also ask questions in the Q&A books using the Q&A button in the great Chiribiquete National Natural Park this process is related to the effects of climate change and adaptation measures we want to in territory that don't fall as many as before fell every wind that blows moves speaks to other trees we look at that movement that they were happy but we don't listen we don't understand but if the spirit of trees is communicating each different trees they also need more water more air Mother Earth is so sick also so we need more trees to plant grass to plant there are trees on the top and there are also trees that want to plant trees that comes from the top we have trees with many plants that take it from the top we have grasses that take it from the top To address these changes, they have formulated a management plan to strengthen land governance, find areas for restoration, areas for conservation, and areas for the use of palm and timber. The management plan talks about how we should take care of our territory, how we should manage our territory, how we should protect the water, how we should protect nature, the animals, how we should hunt the animals. By practicing, we can live in a healthy territory, a balanced territory, and we can stop climate change. But not only in a community we can do this, but also to sensitize all the communities and all the colonies to be able to face the climate change that is being presented today, so that we can work organically within the territory. It's a very different kind of situation and a very different response for the environment. So that's a very different type of situation and a very different response with an important role there for indigenous peoples living in the rainforest area and they are experiencing already the effects of climate change but also undertaking measures to reforest the area and improve the sustainability of the territory. With that I'd like to move to the second question that's sort of central in this webinar and that's how can we scale up processes of cooperation between governments and local communities in an inclusive manner in a way that protects also the rights of the most vulnerable groups and at the same time also to think about what more we might need to know about local climate change to be able to factor in land governance programs properly and with that I would like to first ask Guy from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs if he could make his contribution. Yes thank you very much Richard and it's a pleasure to join this interesting seminar and to be able to to discuss this important topic with all of you today. In response to the question allow me to respond from the angle of my specific area of work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs focusing on international forest conservation and biodiversity. The starting point of the Netherlands international forest policy is promoting sustainable forest management to an integrated approach that gives equal attention to the ecological economic and social aspects so the system as a whole it cycles the stakeholder involved and their interrelationships must be considered in order to effectively address the complex problem of ongoing global deforestation and insufficient and failing governance in forested countries is an important factor for deforestation for example if you look at the Brazilian Amazon at least 90 percent of deforestation is illegal and law enforcement capacity is often insufficient and environmental activists and people who defend land rights and many of whom are members of indigenous people in local communities seeking just to protect their homes are often intimidated and mistreated by illegal groups sometimes even fatally. So an important part of our policy on international forest is therefore to improve public and private governance of forests and inclusive forest governance in this provides the cornerstone in our view to current deforestation trends so only if all the stakeholders are meaningfully engaged in the governance of forests the world will be able to come to a stop of deforestation so we therefore increasingly support initiatives here at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that follow a landscape approach which integrates the objectives of all stakeholders at a landscape level to jointly address deforestation and to jointly implement climate action. An example of this is the Initiative for Sustainable Landscape that's a program we offend from the Netherlands which is implemented by IDH and this is a program which brings together companies, governments, farmers, local communities and civil societies to develop sustainable governance models in tropical forest countries but it's a really good example I think of this landscape approach and within our efforts to improve forest governance we pay particular attention to local communities and the more vulnerable groups in society. As you might know more than 1.6 billion people rely directly to a greater or lesser extent on the products and services that forests provide and even 250 million of them are heavily dependent on forests including many indigenous people and local communities but at the same time as was mentioned already in this seminar many indigenous people and local communities can play a vital role also in countering negative effects of climate change, deforestation and biodiversity loss so they often have an in-depth understanding and local knowledge about these issues so their governance can play a key role in preventing deforestation but also offers valuable opportunities to adapt to climate change and safeguard their livelihoods and through our climate funding we aim to support specific interventions which focus on strengthening the institutions, organizations and networks of local communities to support and scale up also action to protect our lands, forests and resources and in this we focus on creating the right enabling conditions for sustainable forest management by for example providing support to local communities in areas such as inclusive spatial planning, strengthening of land rights and local governance, data availability as was mentioned already as well in this seminar but also transparent decision-making and monitoring and essential is that this is done in an inclusive manner so we are really committed to ensure that women, young people and indigenous communities can meaningfully participate in the negotiations, policy making and implementation of this land governance we also recognize that very little climate funding directly benefits local communities and in our opinion better access for local communities to climate finance is really needed to ensure climate action is context-specific, community-driven and locally owned well in our view this results in a more effective and sustainable approach towards building climate resilience so we also increasingly focus on funding programs where a substantial share of funding is either transferred to local communities or in an indirect way to intermediaries building the capacity of and supporting these communities and one of the examples I want to mention here is the consortium of NGOs called the Green Lifelihoods Alliance which implements the Dutch supported forest for just future program and this program channels well the majority of its budget to local civil society partners which either directly represent local communities or have sufficient local knowledge and experience and to close off I think to to effectively scale up this work on this important topic I think it was really needed to to join forces and increase multi-stakeholder cooperation on this team and a very strong example I think of our collective efforts in this field is the probably known for for all of you is the is the IPLC forest tenure pledge which was made during the COP26 Glasgow conference and it was an announcement made by 22 countries but also philanthropic donors pledging 1.7 billion over the period 2021 and 2025 to jointly advanced forest tenure rights in tropical forest countries and as a result of this pledge there was a workgroup established to coordinate donor collaboration on these pledged ambitions and this includes as well action to scale up mechanisms enabling a greater share of donor funding to reach local communities and indigenous people and moreover the workgroup also facilitates exchanges of informations on successful projects and increases the opportunities for collaboration and for instance one of the initiative the Netherlands supports in which we regularly highlight but also exchange upon under this pledge and within this workgroup is the landed skill program I could go on for ages about this topic but I think I will stop here so thank you very much yeah I don't think we have time for that but thanks very much Donando could I ask you to respond also to the same questions more or less Yes thank you, thank you for the invitation to be here and it has been a pleasure to listen all the other people in the panel. I'm also going to talk more from my discipline of law and try to bring two short examples from Mozambique to connect a bit more with the report from Victor. The first thing I wanted to highlight is how this process of cooperation often come with a with a fix and fairly narrow lens in this case climate related hazards but this very limited lens can be problematic for instance a lot of people for a lot of people climate related risks are only one of many issues that they experience in their daily lives loss of livelihoods, lack of land, lack of income it's often much more present in their life than a future hypothetical climate related hazard so interventions that do not take into consideration all of these problems and do not provide people with solutions for them are much more difficult to get the buy-in from communities we should not forget that people people don't live in in risk prone areas because they want they live in prone risk in risk prone areas because they don't have an alternative a better alternative for their lives so let me give an example about about an example from Mozambique in which I'm writing about which I'm writing right now currently there is this idea of introducing some changes in the land law and one of them is to consider risk areas as part of the public domain of the state so no private rights people cannot acquire any land use rights over this area but this is introduced as one line in the land law without giving any solution to people so this on one hand will make people that already have the trouble of risk leaving in a risk area making them illegal besides leaving in a risk area they will also now be leaving illegally in a risk area and also ignores the fact that risk areas are used for all kinds of things maybe it's not so good to leave in a risk area but perfectly safe to farm in a risk area and by saying risk areas are state land and cannot have any private rights we are excluding all the rights of farmers for instance so it's our role as academics practitioners to highlight this need for a moralistic intervention to politicians and help them to create solutions that really look at these problems in a moralistic way the second point that I want to highlight and Richard highlighted this also in the report is the need for clear legal frameworks and institution when interventions happen I know that talking about law with governments is not easy being a lawyer I know this from experience laws are always politically sensitive lawmaking is a messy problem and but ignoring the role of law is also misguided for any intervention let me give you also an example from previous research in Mozambique when you look at the law on expropriation what you find out is that there is not an expropriation law there are articles spread it here and there but there is not a detailed concrete process that protects the that that can be easily followed and gives everyone the right to participate to negotiate compensation to contest compensation if it's not adequately paid so without the clear process people and state officials are quite lost in on how to improve how to implement a process like that one thing that research shows over and over again is that if on one hand law is not a solution for everything you know a lot of examples where the law is simply not followed but not having any law to guide a complex process more often than not will result in arbitrary processes and most often arbitrary processes work in this favor of the most vulnerable so if too much focus on law can be counterproductive this regarding the law is also not a solution and I want to finish by highlighting one point that we tend to talk about the importance of law as a protection for the people affected and this is obvious and and I find this quite a lot in my research but the law is also important as a protection for state officials it's very easy and we see a lot of examples where state officials are accused of corruption, nepotism, arbitrariness but if they have to implement very complex processes without any legal guidance on how to do it in a transparent and fair way it's only normal that the processes will be chaotic and arbitrary so I wanted to finish by highlighting that legal adequate law and clear transparent legal processes are important to protect people but also to protect state officials and make this processes much more transparent. Great thank you very much Bernardo. Lisette I think you wanted to pose the second mentee question right but do we have a result from the first this is the first one okay but it's it's just like a long list yeah could I maybe suggest that we have a look at that later on and share it as part of the report of the of the webinar rather than trying to discuss it now yeah and we have this the second question is what more do we need to know about local climate change to be able to factor into local government into land governance programs so we will leave we pose this question now as well you could please use the mentee meter to respond and put your responses and we will leave that one open as well and while we do that because because of the pressure of time what I will do first I think is in a minute I'll ask Professor Lewassa to maybe share his thoughts about what he's been hearing today in the webinar so far but there is one question perhaps which we might just quickly run across all panel members although it was posed by Rebecca Harlin specifically to Umbereta but Rebecca is sort of suggesting how you are looking at understanding the need for resolution of conflicts in the region in order to be able to address climate change but is there also evidence that climate change is becoming a source of conflict also and how what implications does that therefore have for land governance Umbereta could you maybe kick off with that yes thank you um apologies I haven't picked up that question from the chat so the question was if there is a will if can you just briefly repeat the the questions sorry Richard yeah it's in the Q&A box it's sort of in your presentation you should have showed there are many many conflicts in the region in the minor region and that these have implications for land governance but also for for climate issues but do you see also evidence already that climate change impacts are also becoming a source of conflict a driving conflict in the region yeah yes thanks thanks sorry sorry for taking long and getting the question yeah absolutely I mean these are I would say all layers of aggravating factors and then in some cases really the the climate-related vulnerability are so strong that they are a source of conflict I mean I'll just mention maybe a couple um water water scarcity it's really an area that is really obviously related to land and who has who has access and control to lands that are near water sources or that have you know underground water reserves and therefore um you know there are conflict across I mean across among communities or even countries to the for the control of that areas or you know fertile lands you know they are very typical trends you know for example conflict between pastoralists and farmers on you know areas that have you know both agricultural and grazing potential and others so I mean just to conclude there are some factors that are really so strong that we can say they are already direct root causes of conflict but otherwise the climate stressors basically make the the violence trigger out of you know underlying other root causes of conflict for example you know even in the case of pastoralists and and farmers which can could otherwise you know very well coexist in in relative peace like as well in the case of Somalia that was also shown in previous examples the the the farmers and the pastoralists would actually go into violent conflict in particularly in the years where there is a drought because the resources are so scarce that actually the the conflict flares up and the existing conflict resolution mechanisms at the local level are not sufficient anymore to mitigate these these tensions thank you. Thanks so maybe just I might just ask Ronald a quick response from the Uganda so do you see situations in Uganda where climate change is driving impacts are already driving the creation of conflicts in certain areas? Yes thank you for that question. There we are already experiencing the effects of climate change and different parts of the country and just to share the same experience I think of Umbreta of course pastoralists moving from the within the kato corridors and moving to areas looking for of course pasture. We see a lot of conflict again with the communities the host communities right now we see it in the north and it's the current discussion in the local ups and the local politics of this country so yes there is already correlation which is triggered of course by the impacts of climate change. Okay good I think in the other time I'm going to have to ask Professor Luasa to to perhaps reflect a little bit on the presentation so far and also to Swab if you could to think a little bit and share a little bit your thoughts about what role local academics and researchers might play in linking or improving the linkage between land governance and climate resilience actions. Thank you very much Richard for the introduction and thank you for the webinar organizers for inviting me it's a pleasure to be here and share my thoughts. In terms of what I'm hearing it looks like it's very clear to me and perhaps to all that we do recognize that land is under pressure from so many different stressors compression growth you know economic development industrial development as we have heard from the different past panelists and because of that pressure land is also one of the solutions that would help us to build resilience and respond to climate change and I'm hearing that through the videos for example in terms of climate smart agriculture and wetland management practices I'm hearing that from Colombia and I'm also hearing that in terms of the drivers of conflicts that are very much climate related in situations where communities very much land and other resource best livelihoods but I also have to mention that land is not the only strategy through which resilience can be built and response to climate change there are other things that need to be done which are definitely under discussion perhaps starting today during the COP and have been under discussion for a long time but governance becomes very critical and I'm hearing that from the all the panelists in respect to governance at micro level in terms of awareness in terms of incentivizing the processes but also creating clear you know formulating very clear illegal and virtue of your frameworks and enabling your strong institutions that would enable land government land governance that supports the different diverse land rights existing in different geographies so I want to refer back a little bit to the report that was highlighted at the beginning IPCC report on land and climate change which has a lot of responses that land best that we need to look at that already communicates that there are a lot of options that we can pick on in respect to responding climate climate change and also building resilience which are land based however a lot of that the options are coming from granular level research which is also another important point that we can take from here but a lot of practices are going on at micro level and these practices might be disparate but they have the answer to what contribution land could actually offer to addressing climate change and building resilience in the various geographies and different communities across the globe so governance is important just like many other things and why governance is important because this defines the rights this defines the use rights this defines how for example different options on livestock management crop land management forestry we've had a lot about the support for international forestry reforestation and afforestation options that are in that IPCC report on land and climate change which have multiple benefits that are economic environmental but also social and can be very much contextualized in different locales where the individual and indigenous but also community rights can be observed through those processes and I would like to come to you the question that Richard you posed to me what role academics and researchers can play in this in this process of building resilience and I again refer to that report because of the evidence that is coming from that report a lot of which is coming from micro level studies that I we see we seem to have lost connection with Professor Lovato just at a critical moment he is in Alizaba bar at present and he was a bit afraid of his connection and apparently it has let us down just at the crux of his final presentation but I I'm sure he was going to he is a strong advocate of involving local researchers in action related research and development projects so I am quite confident that he would be stressing that aspect I have my eye on the clock as well I need about one minute just to wrap up at least set is there anything to mention on the responses from the second Mentimeter anything you would like just to stress at this moment I can't hear you very well but I would take your suggestion and include them in the final report that will be published on the lamp portal because there are a lot of different interesting perspectives there yes okay we will do that and we will try also to include some responses to to questions I think that have been posed some people have posed questions in the Q&A box others have posted them in the chat probably it might take a bit of time to look through everything but we will do our best to give some sort of response I am very sorry that things went wrong during my presentation I I came to the university to make my presentation thinking it would be easier and it turned out to be more difficult I probably should have stayed at home where I know the infrastructure better anyway so I'm very sorry for that that's cost us a little bit of time but in in view of the fact that people have busy busy schedules they probably need to run away I would like to thank everybody who's been involved in putting this together we might get back to you still to reflect a little bit on a couple of questions if that's possible thank you very much for all the panelists thank you for those who have been listening in thank you for your patience at times and we will do our best to share the report as soon as possible if from of this webinar of course the report and other material related to land governance and the land at scale program is all available via the land portal so thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are thank you thank you thank you thanks everybody


Greetings friends! Welcome to CTUCC Conference Cast for January 23, 2015, the regular podcast of the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Whoever you are and wherever you may be on life's journey at this very moment, you are welcome here. We begin this week's conference cast with this meditation from Tim Hughes, Executive Director of Silver Lake Conference Center. Tim has this verse from Psalm 46 in his heart. Be still and know that I am God. I am exalted among the nations. I am exalted in the earth. Imagine you're in the waterfall chapel at Silver Lake. If you've never been, then imagine this. A forest of mature trees, mostly white pines, envelops you. The stream nearby gurgles gently. Sunlight streams down between the branches, highlighted by a slight mist in the air. Others sit around you on rustic log benches on a warm summer morning. A primitive cross hangs on the tree at the front of this peaceful little clearing. Your leader asks you to choose a one-inch spot on the ground by your feet and look closely at it. You think about all the amazing miracles represented there. Tiny life forms of wildly different varieties are there, some too small to be seen. Dirt created over centuries of rotted leaves and washed down from the hills above. Roots help hold the dirt in place and also nurture the trees above you, which provide the very air you breathe in as you smell the damp, earthy fragrance surrounding you. Roots that also provide a potential trip and stumble that help teach each of us to be careful, to pay attention to where we're going. A near-miss fall that provides comic relief as we each remember moments when we ourselves stumbled and were caught or recovered too quickly, looking around and thinking, did anyone see that? Suddenly we become instant fools for Christ, vulnerable in a way that lets others reach out and help us if we slip, to be accidentally connected to one another by our now shared moment of awkward vulnerability. Stones give strength to the earth, steadfast in their hardness, at times useful to us, ancient art that encourages us to glimpse a timeline on which our whole lives are the tiniest of dots. Bugs tirelessly working as a team remind us to be persistent, diligent, and to work for a common cause together. Old leaves remind us of the cycle of life, constantly revolving participants in a never-ending dance of living communion with and for our Creator. We finally look up from our spot of earth and rejoin the gathered group with new eyes, new awareness, new connectedness to the divine and to those around us who are similarly yet profoundly differently changed by our shared experience of the miracle of outdoors, of God's gift of creation. That which urges us to look closely and feel small while thinking big, that could be called God's Holy Spirit. And it flows in and through each of us and between us joining us one to another on a deeper than cellular level, joined together and to God. Here's a prayer for this week. Creator God remind us to take a look closely at your creation today so that we are once again reminded of the care you took in preparing our world and all that dwells within it. Make us truly stewards of this spaceship earth and all of our fellow travelers on it. Amen. Please hold the family and friends of the Reverend Dr. Donald Ketchum, Pastor Emeritus of the West Avon Congregational Church UCC in your prayers today. He served 32 years as Pastor of the West Avon Church and was a beloved and well-respected leader in the Connecticut Conference. He died early in the morning this Thursday at the age of 72. In the news this week, the Connecticut Conference released a video announcement from Conference Minister the Reverend Kent Solati this morning saying, well, why don't we just have him say it. On behalf of the Associate Conference Minister for Transitions Search Committee, I am very pleased to announce that we are calling the Reverend Michelle Hughes to serve as our Associate Conference Minister for Transitions. This is a newly created staff position and it is intended to help our congregations with transitions and to bring to our churches the best leaders that we can possibly find. Michelle is coming to us from Chicago, Illinois, where she has served in an interim capacity in two congregations. She brings a very background to this work. She has been a pastor, an educator, a trainer in diversity. She's had her own business and she's worked in organizing. Michelle is a person of deep faith. She has a great sense of humor. She is intelligent. She brings a passion for the United Church of Christ and she brings particular gifts and insights for organizing our search process and for helping us do the work that we need to do for leadership development. So I hope you will join me in welcoming Michelle Hughes to our midst. Her start date tentatively is March 1st and we'll be sharing more information with churches about Michelle. We wish you blessings, Michelle, as you join our conference. Monday churches around the conference honored the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., frequently joining with other congregations and with other faith communities in their observances. The Reverend Verdi Powers, Associate Conference Minister in the Illinois Conference, UCC, brought a powerful message to the Hartford area observance held at Faith Congregational Church, UCC, on Main Street. She called on African Americans to continue their quest for full participation in American society. I believe we can celebrate the life of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., when we realize that we black for our mind place, all that God has scored. This is not a passive trusting or passive waiting. God will act. God will act through us. Treat everybody. Other speakers, including Conference Minister Solati, addressed the question, does justice matter with a resounding answer of yes. The congregation included members and friends of UCC churches throughout the Hartford area with some coming many miles to attend the service. As worship closed, host pastor the Reverend Stephen Camp invited visiting clergy to stand at the front of the sanctuary and the line stretched all across the front of the church. On Thursday, January 15th, a single candle flickered in the chapel of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church UCC in Hartford at a service where the state's ecumenical organization, the Christian Conference of Connecticut, formally ended its ministry. Board President the Reverend David Baird presented the commendations and significant financial gifts to four organizations which continue to do work consistent with the commitments of Chris Kahn. The Connecticut Council for Interreligious Understanding. Congregations organized for a new Connecticut Food Share and the Connecticut Food Bank. Board Secretary the Reverend Bruce Steinway offered a homily based on Jesus' parable of the seed. We need to acknowledge that institutions also are called to die. That is the pace right now for the Christian Conference of Connecticut. But in dying, we need to recall our Lord's words about that ring of grief. So long as it refuses to die, it remains only a single ring. And we remind you that registration is open for Silverlake Summer Conferences. We've got a new video online that gives you a sense of what a week at camp might be like for a young person in your life, and which explains our new three-tiered pricing system. You can learn more at SilverlakeCT.org. And you'll find more information on all these stories when you visit us at ctucc.org. Pray and Play is a retreat for UCC clergy under the age of 40 at Silverlake running January 27th through the 29th. If you're a high school age youth who's thinking about working for God for a living, there's a weekend retreat for you at Silverlake the weekend of January the 30th. Learn about the human costs of the war on drugs at a screening of The House I Live In with a discussion following on January 31st in East Hadam. Clergy women are invited to a special retreat day to refresh themselves with soul food for the journey on February 3rd in Glastonbury. There are still openings in this year's confirmation retreats in February and March. Sign your group up soon while there's space for you. Get ready for summer with a workshop called Unpacking Vacation Bible School on February 7th in West Hartford. The Stepping Stones Workshop team building with youth groups and adults too will be February 10th in Cheshire with another Stepping Stones event on Church Asset Mapping for Faith Formation on February 26th in Milford. And you can learn more about all the Stepping Stones workshops at ctucc.org slash Stepping Stones. Young people have an opportunity to prepare to be a counselor in training at Silverlake with a weekend conference March 13th through 15th. Make sure you've got Super Saturday on your calendar. This day of workshops features keynote speaker the Reverend Ruben Duran who works on promoting new church development for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This joint venture with the Massachusetts Conference will be held March 21st in Ludlow, Massachusetts. The women's yoga and spirit retreat is at Silverlake March 27th through the 29th as is the Maple Sugaring weekend. Stewardship in the Changing Church moving from consumerism to generosity is the theme of this year's Ecumenical Stewardship event on April 17th and 18th in Boxborough, Massachusetts. To learn more about these events or to register, visit us at ctucc.org slash events. Our spirited Wednesday thought comes from the Reverend Dr. Robert LaRachel who serves at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Windsor. Reflecting on Jesus' call to come fish for people with him, Dr. LaRachel asks us to concentrate on the person of Jesus. He writes, A church that does not focus on Jesus and the way his life can move ours simply ceases to be what a church must be. A community of people willing to fish for others to join this movement which can change people's lives and transform God's world. And that brings this conference cast to a close. Thanks to Tim Hughes for his reflection and to GarageBand for our music. Primary funding for conference cast comes from your congregation's gifts to our church's wider mission, Basic Support, Changing Lives through the United Church of Christ. This is Eric Anderson, the Associate Conference Minister for Proclamation, Identity and Communication for the Connecticut Conference of the United Church of Christ. Praying that your days this week may be filled with the presence, the guidance and the grace of God.


Printed electronics have been gaining popularity in recent years due to their ability to provide cost-effective solutions for a variety of applications. Printing technology has enabled the development of flexible, lightweight, and low-cost electronic devices which are suitable for use in a wide range of industries such as healthcare, automotive, consumer electronics, and military. However, despite its advantages, printing technology still faces several challenges when it comes to scaling up production and integrating with existing electronics manufacturing processes. Additionally, printing technology is not yet widely available in the marketplace, making it difficult to implement in large-scale production. Despite these limitations, printed electronics offer great potential for sensors and other applications, and researchers continue to develop new methods to overcome these challenges. This article was authored by Johanna Zicklenig, Sean Chan, Joe Beto, and others. We are article.tv, links in the description below.


Soldiers of the press. This week, battle boomerangs. Ah, there you are, Tony. He's Senior Packard. Tony, drop in at the P.A. and get me a package of cigarettes while I finish this story, will you? Sir, I meant the Senior Packard, but... Oh, yes, yes, yes. Here's the money. Senior Packard. Who is Sergeant York? An American soldier who captured about the whole German army in the last war, that's all. Well, the colonel said every...  It was your idea to come along and run errands for us correspondents, you know? Yes, sir. But the colonel said that there is... The colonel says what? The colonel said Sergeant York just walked into headquarters from a no-man's land. Two of him. All right, Tony, you win. We'll both go get those cigarettes. If the colonel says Sergeant York is here, you may have stumbled onto a good yarn for me at that. A few minutes later, I had a reason to regard the small amount of cost to feed and house that orphaned young Italian as the best investment I ever made. For Tony's budding news sense had led me to as amazing a yarn as I have come across in many months of battlefront reporting. For the beginning of it, we go to a shell-swept hillside in no-man's land between the Allied Fifth Army advancing on Rome and the German front lines. A captain and sergeant of the United States Medical Corps, unarmed as usual, even in these hazardous surroundings, were administering blood plasma to a wounded corporal. This boy's lost a lot of blood, Sergeant, suffering from shock, too. Can't lose any time. I'll have the transfusion gear set up in a minute, sir. Well, let's see. You could throw the hose over that branch above you and set the plasma bottle in the crotch. Yes, sir. I'll give you the word when I'm ready for the stuff. Okay. What's going on here? Where? He's coming, too, Captain. That's all right, son. Just neck to shoulder. We'll have you okay in just a few minutes. Well, my... Just lie quietly. We're going to give you something that'll have you back with your outfit in no time. I gotta get back. What am I doing? No, no, no. Just keep your arm out straight and your fist clenched. This'll hurt just a little bit. Captain, I think I hear something. Huh? Easy, easy? There. Captain, somebody's coming. All right, Sergeant. Press the valve now. It's high, it's dark. A German would throw. I can see him creeping through the woods here. Well, Sergeant, there's not much we can do about it. Besides, we have work to do. Yes, sir. You better get out of here, sir. I'll be all right.  Thank you, sir. I'm sticking. I'll go along, Captain, Sergeant. Yes, sir. What have you seen, sir? All right. Put your hands up, Sergeant. I'm using mine. Okay. American sign. Head up. I love you. Oh, well. Me, too, Captain? No, no. Not you, Corporal.   Search him. Search them all. Take it easy, will you? Sir, you think to fight the hell-mongering elite division without guns, huh? The Americans need you. We are the medical corps here, Oberleutnant. You are German prisoners. Come along. Well, we'll have to finish this transfusion. It won't take long. This man's life is at stake. May I be quick about it? You may. Have I hurt that, Doc? It might be all right. Oh, you're going to be all right, sir. Thanks to somebody back home who donated this blood plasma. Glad you. And hurry along with your business. A few more CCs, and we'll be all done. Just like quietly and relaxed. No, we'll hold big Christmas. You shouldn't have done it, Doc. Well, that's our job, my boy, just as you were doing your job when you were hit. What's taking you so much time? Hurry up, don't hurry up. Just one second more. There. Now the dressing. Ah, he cannot be here any longer. Can't be here. Patluia, Pomiad. Patluia, Pomiad. More alcohol and cotton, Sergeant? Yes, sir. That's it. Now, girls. Here you are, sir. All right. At ease, sir? Here. All right. Now on the stretcher. Okay, sir. There we are. And that's how an American captain and sergeant in the medical corps, lost in their patrol in no man's land, happened to become prisoners of the Nazis, along with a wounded corporal they had come across in their wandering. The captain, knowing that other American patrols were operating in this area, and that an allied advance was indicated by the artillery barrage he could hear in the distance, had stalled as long as possible over the transfusion. Now, under the angry prodding of their German captors, they were making the reluctant trek to a Nazi concentration camp behind the German lines, bearing the wounded corporal on a stretcher. But they weren't through stalling. Air overlordment, please. My patient can't stand this pace. We'll have to let him rest a moment. Right again. Is this a Yankee trick? Gee, Lieutenant. The kid is real sick, and I... I didn't know it! Oh, you're pushing around, Heidi. If you didn't have that gun, I'd have passed the wire open. Silence, all of you. Put that man down. Thank you, Oberleutnant. This is the last time I've kept you. I warn you. All right. I'll administer morphine to Jesus. That is the name of your Americans. Or shall we say humane, Air Oberleutnant? None of your insolence. Uge. Uge. Ihe. Atwe. Ihe. Ihe. Yeah. All right. One more word, and I'll suit all the three of you. You going out? Hey, Oberleutnant! I'm the Americano! And I'm the Americano outside on the other side of the track! Rasty, find out what that is! This is our chance. Quick, help me get him back in that big tree. What the Germans are... Well, the Germans are busy with other things. Come on, hurry! They don't know where he is. We'll be killed by our own bullets. Oh, it'll be all over in a moment. My pleasure. Now, boy, get close enough. Give the counter sign. Counter sign? Gee. I forgot the counter sign, sir. Strawberry Shortcake. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Strawberry Shortcake. Strawberry Shortcake! Hey, yeah! Strawberry Shortcake! And so entered the second act of this drama of no man's land. The sergeant's counter sign had been recognized by the advancing Yanks and the three so recently facing the dismal prospect of imprisonment were reunited with their comrades. It looked like a happy ending when the American patrol took over the job of bearing the wounded corporal and gave the captain and sergeant directions back to the Allied lines. Shortly after they had parted company, a new menace and then another appeared in rapid succession. Say, Captain, I'm beginning to think our guys don't like us. What do you mean? That ain't Jerry artillery fire and it's getting closer all the time. Well, our fellows couldn't very well know we're here. But even if they did, they couldn't hold up the war just because we got lost. Uh, Captain, sir, don't you think we ought to try to walk around this barrage? Yeah, and get lost again? Well, sir, I'd rather be lost than dead. Well, just keep down as much as possible. We'll be all right. Okay. Say, make that a farmhouse up there ahead. Yeah, you're right. I will make for it and take cover till this thing blows over. Uh, Captain. Yeah? You know what I'd rather be doing right now? Well? Eating some of my mom's homemade strawberry shortcake. Yeah, that wouldn't be bad. Not bad at all. Say, Captain, I wonder who makes up those counter signs and why it always has to be something to remind you of what you haven't gotten one. Well, that's to make you quite hard, sergeant, so you'll get home quicker where you will have it. Home. Gee, sometimes I wonder if there is such a place like I remember it. Yeah, it does seem almost too good to be true, doesn't it? Yeah. I wonder what my girl's doing right now. Gosh. Say, you got a girl, Captain? Oh, you bet. Two of them. Both blondes. Cripes. A bigamist, huh? One twenty-two, the other two. Oh, I get it. I get it. Boy, that one had our number on it, sir. Close all right, too close. Well, we're almost to the farmhouse. We could run for it, sir. I've got an idea. Let's go. Hey, wait a minute. Someone's in there. Yeah, yeah, I hear someone moving. Talking. Drones. Gee, they're wounded. Whoever they are. Force moving, you'll all be killed. This place is surrounded. Hang on that gun, you. Hey, come on out. Close and command here. We meet again, unfortunately. Well, I'll be. The same Jerry's that took us prisoners. I'll take that pistol of you, please, Oberleutnant. Ah, never mind. Just keep your hands up. I'll have myself. There. Stand still back there. Don't let him move till I catch the orders. Yeah, Oberleutnant, instruct your men to advance one at a time and lay their weapons here. Rifles, Tommy guns, hand grenades, everything. Remember, our men have you covered from every side. Oh, foolishness now. All right, tell them. One after the other, advance. Fall down. Get out of the way. What a land. Go to Stingels. You, Krüger. Yes, Oberleutnant. Make them hand you their rifles, but first, Sergeant. Yes, sir. Take out the bolts and throw them in the corner. I'll keep you covered. Oh, uh, you, Schmidt. Here's a Tommy gun for you, Captain. It's more business now. Thanks. What should we do now? Some of our friends of this morning don't seem to like us. Yes, sir. You may select those of the wounded to bring them here. Yes, the cattle will be very glad when we walk in with this hall. Yes, sir. You bet.  What Sergeant York got that we haven't? Well, you should know, Sergeant, strawberry shortcake. But the Captain and Sergeant did get strawberry shortcake that night. When the Colonel heard the story, he ordered the mess sergeant to have it for chow. If he had to make it out of strawberry jam and GI biscuit. And that's the way it was done. I saw to it that Tony got an extra large piece for tipping me to the story. Not the story of a big battle, to be sure, or even a minor engagement. Just how two unarmed medical men in one brief day had managed to get lost in the outfit, save the life of a corporal, be taken prisoner by the Nazis, and in turn take their captors, 20 of them, prisoner. But its acts of courage, heroism, and resourcefulness like these are men in every unit of the Allied forces that win the engagements and speed the day of ultimate victory. Like Reynolds Packard, United Press war correspondents are on the job to bring you eyewitness stories from every battle front. We will bring you another thrilling story of these soldiers of the press soon. Be sure to listen. And remember to listen to United Press news on the air. Look for United Press dispatches in your favorite newspaper. They are your guarantee of the world's best coverage of the world's biggest news.