Thank you very much for having me and I'm quite impressed that the room is full at this time and we're really hopeful. Okay, some facts on South Africa. South Africa is amongst the top 20 global emittors in the world. We have a population of about 49 million people and you're probably wondering why we're amongst the top 20 global emittors since we're such a small country. Mae'r unig yma yw'r cyfnodd ar gyfer colla. Yn 68% yma yw'r unig yw colla. Yn y bach yw'r colla yw'r unig yw'r cyfnodd. Yn 53% yw'r totol ymgyrch. Yn y cyfnodd cyfnodd. Yn Eiskam, y cyfnodd cyfnodd yw'r unig yw'r top 3. Yn gyfnodd liLL ond y cyffredin cyffredin ymgyrch, y gallw hir yw'r cynyddoedd. Yn ddefnyddiad yma yna yw'r top 20 sydd cyd-au cyffredin ac ymgyrch ymgyrch ymgyrch ymdegddydd yma, ym eich hwn yn eu cynyddu cyffredin a dearbyn ymy ymgyrch. Yn cyfnodd cyffredin, y cîn ymddir hwn ymgyrch i teachers ymgyrch yn cael ei gair sydd gyda, aис ymgyrch gyda'r gyfer cyffredin. Yn wych yn ei bobl sydd y bydd y byd, mae'n eich bod noddolwyr cael yn cyfnod o modd. Rwy'n gy botherdd yr hynny i ail yn ei bobl, ac mae'n meddwl araf i'w meddwl, felly rywbeth ymddangosolol yn maen nhw'n meddwl ar y cyfyrd yn i'r gwath. Felly, gallwn bod y pethau'r ysgol ymddangosol anodd yw'r byd yn rhan, ond mae'n mynd yn ei gobl ysgolol am rhai rwyde i gael i wathio. to various countries, so I've compared South Africa in this slide to other developing countries and just for interest's sake have also included Germany and you can see that our energy intensity across sectors is quite high. So what are we doing around policy interventions to mitigate? I've kept this slide at a very high level. We do have a national development plan. This is a newly released document that focuses on various aspects of the country's development but the environment is quite prominent in the plan. It gets a chapter all on its own largely because there is wide recognition and acceptance that we have to do something because South Africa will be adversely affected by climate change. There are a series of energy policies and plans that also take climate into account. This would be through our integrated energy plan as well as our integrated resource plan which is for electricity which has started to internalize some of the climate impacts by adding some elements of renewable energy. We have got some strong work around climate response and what we are doing. We have a national strategy for sustainable development and there's a number of sectoral policies that are aimed at developing green industries. We are doing very specific work. There was a session this morning in which some of my colleagues from the ERC presented on the long-term mitigation scenarios work that has been done. There is work that is being done on mitigation at sectoral level. We are also beginning to do some work around long-term adaptation scenarios and specific programmes around waste management and these growing areas such as recycling and local production and installation of solar water heating. The areas that I have put in a light grey such as development of a green growth strategy are light grey because it is work being developed. On top of that I have reflected on some of the commitments that we had made in Copenhagen. This is light grey because the commitments hinged on us getting some international climate finance so that hasn't come through so this is a great area. We still have some level of commitment to reducing emissions. Just taking a picture of the economy because one does have to from a policy analysis perspective look at the economy and how the South African economy performs and where do we see climate coming in. The current economic environment in South Africa is not supportive of accelerated growth and job creation and this is due to a number of factors. There are some capacity limitations in certain areas to implement policy as well as to lift up potential growth particularly at a sub-national government level and of course this does have implications for how one goes about mainstreaming climate issues. We have got electricity shortages and rapidly rising electricity prices. What this means is if you've got no electricity and you have to choose between building another coal fire station and building renewables because you do not have carbon pricing you pick the coal fire station. It appears to be cheap so that does have some implications. We have infrastructure bottlenecks in terms of ports, rail and the road network and we need to add capacity in all of these areas and at the moment we in quite a constrained fiscal environment not as constrained as the rest of Europe but for us we see it as a constrained fiscal environment due to the weak global economy and also weak investor confidence domestically and there's been fairly slow progress on the global climate front so for us this sort of lends itself to the bits in the grey bar that if you continue along these lines and not much is happening you will have low growth, you'll have lower job creation, you are likely to achieve your emissions reductions so we see a lot of things as having to change for South Africa to internalise what we have to do on the climate front. This is a picture of the electricity situation. I put this slide just to give you a sense because when I start to talk about some of the political economy considerations electricity is going to come up a lot but our electricity prices have had to increase quite sharply over the last five years and our integrated resource plan sees electricity prices increasing quite sharply between 2010 and 2030 but it's largely because prices have been or were quite low in the mid 90s and we took too long to make decisions around building new capacity so now we've basically run out of power, we need to build new capacity and we haven't priced in the fact that we would have had to replace current assets so prices have had to adjust quite rapidly but at the same time we have to manage electricity demand. Okay, so to get to the gist of the presentation, South Africa is considering a number of carbon pricing mechanisms. For this presentation I'm only going to focus on the carbon tax because of time but there is work being done on carbon budgeting approaches across various sectors and also some work being done around whether we need to have an emissions trading scheme and how that would work. We have done some modelling of the carbon tax, I'm not going to discuss this much but you're welcome to go and read James' paper which he presented on this morning which will give you an indication of the type of work that we had to model but in 2010 at the end of 2010 we published a discussion paper on a carbon tax and how it might work, we've done some internal modelling with the assistance of UNUIDA and from the modelling work that we've done we have an indication that given the level and mode of recycling carbon taxes could have a small negative impact on the economy but revenue recycling is an area that we will have to seriously consider to ensure that we manage the growth and distribution outcomes in the economy and that we could use the additional revenue to resolve bottlenecks in the economy which could give us a double dividend but of course in a political economy set up all of this is quite debatable. The elements of the carbon tax, we have taken the approach that we will face in the carbon tax gradually over a period but we need to have some exemptions for trade exposure and to have some offsets to retain some elements of competitiveness and that we're looking to have incorporated into the design some exemptions for efficiency gains and in terms of border tax adjustments we have decided we cannot have border tax adjustments at this stage but if you read James' paper it will present both sides of the argument. You might be wondering why carbon pricing is important for a country like South Africa primarily because of the threat of border tax adjustments that could be imposed on South Africa, we do rely on our minerals quite heavily for export revenue and that loss of competitiveness would be quite a big dent and then there's of course our own developmental needs because we will be so adversely affected by climate we would also lose some of our tourism and agriculture revenue. How much time do I have, Channing? Five minutes. Right, there's a lot to say. Okay, political economy considerations. So while South Africa has been very good at actually participating on climate for a globally and being part of the UNFCCCC discussions around climate and these broad acceptance that we need to do a lot about climate change, the climate discussions has gone in parallel with the economic discussions. The two just haven't converged and meet where they're supposed to meet and we're getting to the stage where after the 2009 Copenhagen commitments we had to then bring the two together to say okay we've made these commitments so what does it mean? And when the discussion started and all of us realised there would be pain of course we've had to manage some vested interests. So I've divided the vested interests both in two ways. So there's private sector vested interests and the private sector vested interests have largely not been a rejection about the fact that we have to do something about climate change but they've been about policy uncertainty and risk and it's largely because there is currently policy uncertainty and risk in the economy and they feel we are just adding now a new layer to the policy uncertainty and risk and that the timing is not right and that there are too many competing policy objectives in the South African economy. This is the area of discomfort. And the fact that government is not talking as one. So you will have some government departments that says you need to become more energy efficient, you need to do a lot and that should be the primary focus but at the same time we want to localise, we want more employment and they're saying well we don't know what exactly you're asking us to do and a lot of these are international firms that feel that they have to compete with their counterparts elsewhere in the world and they don't understand what we are saying to them as government. So that's come up as an issue but largely it's a transition issue for them as well. They would like to hear from government so they agree with our numbers in terms of the in-state. But they want to know how we are going to help them manage the challenges that they will have to go through in making the adjustments around climate change because all of the costs are increasing at the same time and of course we are being threatened with closure of firms and lower FDIs and the list continues. The vested interests are also there in the public sector in that departments at all spheres of government actually expect to have parallel economic processes and announcements at once. So they don't want to change existing programmes, they're happy to have climate programmes in addition to their current work but they don't want to change or review any of their programmes quite radically and that's also understandable because there is social pressure in a number of areas for departments to deliver and it's really difficult to say well let's take a bit more time and think about how we're going to do this when there's been a delay in actually the delivery of services. So dealing with trade-offs has had to be about ensuring that there's better alignment between planning and implementation. It's involved some review of institutions and figuring out what it is that we're doing at least at a national government level. Starting with at least managing our domestic climate finance programmes and exactly what we're doing there and also having some sort of agreed conduit on how we will deal with international climate finance once we receive it in South Africa, which we have not done very well in the past. There's also the issue around reporting. The deployment of additional tools also refers to the analysis and the type of analysis that we've had to do to manage some of the trade-offs that we'll have to deal with and also messaging of some of these reforms to politicians and the public. This is the list of questions that we've been confronted with. You think everyone is happy, you put out a carbon tax paper and you've got a multitude of questions that you have to deal with. Electricity comes up quite a lot. Largely the issue in the electricity sector is we want to have a carbon tax but we also have an integrated resource plan that tells the utility what to build. You have an in-built carbon budget so what are you saying? Again the mixed messages that industry has been referring to and it's also brought about some questions about well okay if we only have coal where are we going to get this clean energy from and how much energy will we have to import from our neighbours because a lot of the clean energy will have to come out of South Africa will be from outside South Africa yet we have a cap on how much energy we can import into South Africa. There's been questions about border tax adjustments, what should the role of border tax adjustments be, will we have first move advantage if we do this while we're just penalising our firms for no reason. Okay so in terms of the work that we've had to do we've had to look at cost and benefits measured in terms of jobs, equity and economic growth terms because temperature rises, water level increases have no meaning to households and politicians. It's sort of seen as another layer of bureaucracy that we're saying well we will take the most expensive route as usual so we've had to be quite innovative. So we have started some partnerships one of which is with wider in developing economic tools that link climate change and energy models to economic models so that area of work is developing very well. Also evaluating economic impacts of various energy paths because in the past this has not been done very well and also integrating our regional energy options and trying to see what the climate change impacts will be as well within the region because it's no point considering hydro. If your source for the hydro scheme is going to dry up in a few years and you've sunk in a significant investment there as well as evaluating the economic impacts of climate change and various mitigation and adaptation options. And then of course the management of the internal politics has been quite challenging but it's been something that we've had to invest in quite a lot. So what have we learnt in doing this work around the carbon tax? I think for me personally it's just the realisation that the development path of course is never simple. We've had to accept that there will be lags between the policy decisions, programme implementation and then the realisation of the results. There are real trade-offs. It's an issue that came up I think in the opening plenary that climate is seen as a soft issue if you've got some real challenges on the ground that you have to deal with. So the trade-offs are important to recognise and also understanding that you'll have to compromise. And the compromise for me is much better to ensure that this gradual mainstreaming of climate change rather than fighting too hard to make sure you get things right and then nothing does happen. So the preference that we are going for is starting small and seeing where the quick wins are because in some areas making the adaptation or even mitigating is not as costly. But building capacity is quite important before we roll out any large schemes in South Africa. So I think I will end off there. Thank you very much.


It's the long arms.


Hey guys, it's Liana and I'm here today with my December TBR. There isn't any particular rhyme or reason to this TBR other than my buddy read with Amanda. Everything else was stuff that I literally grabbed off the shelves a minute ago. I was like, man, I need a TBR.  As usual, I apologize if you hear any clanging and banging. It is my neighbor, presumably continuing their clock dancing studies. First book on my list is Holidays, which is me and Amanda's buddy read for the month. Amanda picked it. It is obviously, yep. So the live show will be on her channel the last Saturday of the month, which I don't know what the date of that is right now, but, oh, phone. I can find out. Boxing Day, the 26th, the day after Christmas. Yeah, so Holidays is a, it's by Christina Lauren. Never read anything by Christina Lauren. This, I believe, is kind of like, I mean, it is a romance that's Christmas centered, but it's also Groundhog Day death thing, where like she keeps dying and reliving the same day, but I think the day that she's reliving is Christmas Day, and yep, I'm not gonna lie, this sounds pretty intriguing. Like a contemporary Christmas romance, like normally I'd be like, Groundhog Day death Christmas romance. The next book is The Bone Season by Samantha Shannon. I've actually read this before. I've also read The Mime Order, but I never finished reading the books that are out so far in the Bone Season series. I read the first two and haven't read the third one, the song rising, because I just didn't feel like it at the time, plus then there was no word on the next book coming out at all anyway. So I felt zero urgency, but the next book is finally coming out, The Mask Falling in January, I think. So I don't think I'll catch up on a reread before the next one comes out, but I'm like, oh, back in the Bone Season game. I need to reread that, because I forgot most of it. The Bone Season, if you haven't read it or heard of it, I quite liked it. It is kind of a tough one to get into. It does precisely zero hand-holding. It is a kind of a dystopian-ish type of situation where this is like London and I guess not too distant for each other and alternate London, I'm not super clear. And I don't think it was clear at the time or I've forgotten. There are people with these sort of like, what's the word? It's not psychic. The back of the book supplied me with the word clairvoyant. She's a clairvoyant. There's different levels of clairvoyancy, different things you can do with your clairvoyancy. And there's like this like secret sub-world of London and this criminal underworld of London and all these clairvoyants and the different levels of the clairvoyance. And again, the book has like charts and glossaries and like here's like all the orders of like the different kinds of clairvoyancy.  If you dive right in and just read it, which is what I did, you can kind of pick it up along the way, but it's tough because it's just like, it throws you into the middle. There's like slang and jargon and all of this stuff that it does not explain to you ever. Like you can look at the glossary, you can look at the chart. Other than that, it's just gonna tell the story. It was quite interesting, quite unusual, quite unique, found the characters compelling and the concept engrossing. And I would, I just need to refresh myself so that I can read the next book when it comes out. The next book I have is The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander. I read The Book of Three, which is the first book in the Chronicles of Prudain a couple months ago. I've been wanting to read The Chronicles of Prudain since I was a kid basically because I love the movie The Black Cauldron, which is Disney's version of kind of the whole Chronicles. They called it The Black Cauldron, which is the second book. I really loved the first book, which is The Book of Three. I really, really, really loved it. Like it was, it had all the charm of the movie that I loved so much, but more of it and more quirks and more loveliness and more magic. And it was just like everything I loved about the movie, but like to the max turned up to 11. So I'm really excited to continue on and read The Black Cauldron. The next book is the second book in the bind up known as Rise of Empire. The Riria Revelations, three books in the Riria Revelations. Each one is actually a bind up of two. So the Riria Revelations is in effect actually six books, not three. So I read the first book that is in this bind up earlier this year. And that was Nifron Rising, right? Am I right? I think that's right. Yeah, Nifron Rising. And then the book that I now need to read is The Emerald Storm. First bind up book is Theft of Swords, which contains two books as well. I read that a couple years ago. It's just a really sort of traditional fun fantasy, adult fantasy that follows kind of two thieves, Hadrian and Royce, who have this sort of great banter-y friend relationship. And there's nothing particularly mind bogglingly original or unique about the world of the Riria books. It's very, very traditional fantasy. But there's just really great kind of like character development and this like friendly banter thing and adventure.  It's not earth-shattering in any way. It's just a good time. And I'd like to finish this so that I could finally pick up the Era of Nauvron, which is the third in the Riria Revelations. And then I think I've mentioned a few times about the saga of me purchasing Riria books because I bought Age of Myth and then found out that was a prequel to the Riria Chronicles. I bought all the Riria Chronicles and then found out the Riria Chronicles were a prequel series to the Riria Revelations. So I own like 50 billion Michael Jackson books because I kept buying them as I discovered what they were actually prequels to. So I didn't get through these bad books. I'm enjoying them. I just, I need to read them. Next book is a very recent purchase. Like it arrived five minutes before I started filming this. And then there's Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. I never before really wanted to read this. It sounded, I just kind of pictured it as being kind of like Twilight Light and I've never been interested in Twilight. But I heard recently somebody talking about it and it sounds like it's a lot more sort of like dark academia with like witches and vampires. And it has like this pretentiousness that I am absolutely here for. Like I love the Secret History by Donna Tart. So this sounded to me like the Secret History but with vampires and witches kind of salivating at the thought of that. I might hate it. It is very long. And if it's going to be too romance-y, like too like angsty and dramatic on that side of things, I won't, I don't think I'll like it. But I am hopeful that I will like this. And if I do, that's lucky and fortunate because it's a completed series. It came out a while ago. So I can just chew my way through the whole series if I like it. The next is a relatively recent acquisition and that is The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley. Earlier this year I read The Guest List by Lucy Foley which I also got from Book of the Month. And this, I don't know if it just came out because The Guest List just came out. I don't know if she had two books come out this year.  But I really liked The Guest List and The Hunting Party is also a closed circle isolated mystery that takes place, I believe, at a cabin or a mansion or something but around Christmas time. 30-somethings from Oxford meet to welcome in the new year together. So just after Christmas in the Scottish Highlands. Now one of them is dead and another one of them did it. So it's like, and then there were none but like in the snow. So it sounds like the perfect December read. I'm very excited. Next up I have The Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik. I am over two for Naomi Novik. I hated deadly education and I hated uprooted but I own this goddamn gorgeous edition of Spinning Silver and I've had so many people tell me that even though I liked those other or disliked those other two that they still think that I would like Spinning Silver. So we're gonna try it. And if I don't like this, well then I think that'll be the final nail in the Naomi Novik coffin. She truly is not an author for me. I hold out hope that I could still like this despite having hated the other two books I read. Because each book has been quite different. My issues with them were quite different. So I may end up hating this as well but I suspect if I do hate it, it will be for yet an entirely different set of reasons than the other two. The last book on my TBR is Intreat Me by Grace Draven. I've read this two or three times already. It's not, my favorite favorite is Radiance but Intreat Me takes place around Winter Solstice. And I do quite like it, not as much as Radiance but almost as much as Radiance. And it's just a cozy Winter Solstice fantasy. Oh, if you don't know what it is at all, it's a beauty and the beast retelling where, it's a Grace Draven book. I tend to like Grace Draven books. It is a beauty and the beast retelling takes place in Winter Solstice but kind of the twist on it I guess. The main character who you really follow, she's the older sister of this really young beautiful girl there. She's like, I think they're half sisters. The young girl is in love with this very handsome prince. And so she's kind of her chaperone and the beast character is the sort of handsome prince's father who is like cursed and deformed. And so it's kind of this like, they kind of hit it off because she's there to chaperone and it's his son.  This isn't like a first love, young love, Stockholm syndrome situation. Like she insists on staying there to chaperone and it's during Winter Solstice. So there's like all the Winter Solstice vibes like a very earthy Christmas which is kind of my favorite kind of style of Christmas having just a lot of like evergreen bows and a yule log and like very that kind of vibe much more so than the Holly Jolly deck the halls with tinsel and money type of Christmas. So it's just, it's a really, I just love the vibe of Intreat Me. I really quite, like I like a British and Nildico and Radiance better but I do really, really like Louvain and Oh God, what's his name? Ballard in this book. I think I just, I appreciate, I always like the characters, the Grace Draven rights. She tends to write very, very three dimensional mature, interesting characters that I like to hang out with and follow. And so this will be at least the third time that I'm reading this. It's become kind of a tradition with me. So I'm like looking forward to this. Alrighty, that does it for my TBR. Let me know in the comments down below what you'll be reading December. If you're reading any of the books that I'm reading, if I've now inspired you to pick up any of these books as usual, I will have links down below all the books that I'll be reading so you can get them if you want to. Please join me and Amanda in reading holidays so that you can chat with us during the live show. It's always more fun if y'all have read it. Yeah, let me know all the things and like and subscribe if you enjoyed the video. I post videos on Saturdays, other times as well, but definitely Saturdays, so I'll see you when I see you. Bye.


What's up guys welcome back to the channel. We're out here at Kernel. We're at this funky little spot There's a little spongebob painting. I just noted but yeah It's probably like the funnest coolest little park in Sydney. Check it out. Got a couple blokes out here today. Got young Jamie Zandies out here having a stretch. Had a big night the night before So he's trying to get limbed up. But yeah, let's have a look at this park It did look a lot bigger on the internet, but we're here now, but check it out. We've got a weird Kicker to pole jam combo. I'm not too sure why they've done that Yeah We've got a flat ledge here. That's pretty sick good height good length We've got a little manual pad slash curb. You can do some slappies on I think it's a bit taller than a curb though It's a bit higher and we've got this sick round flat bar in the middle followed by some Hubbors and a down rail and an out rail and a little spongebob here if you guys can see Spongebob skate park and not only this park looks like a lot of fun Check out the view here guys. Honestly a few guys aren't from Sydney If you guys want to see what the Sydney skyline looks like check it out Had a burp a few guys can see out in the distance there. That's the Sydney city skyline We're actually on a peninsula right here. So we've got water either side of us But um, it's like a big shipping port here and then that's Sydney city right over there Very quiet out here today.  It was raining for ages in Sydney. It's been raining for like a week on and off So I'm glad we got some sunshine. So really keen to rip into this park.  They can take the flying quarks down the way there Got any kids you can bring to this park and Children I've actually found my old dad cam from high school We used to make like high school movies and stuff when we're in grade 12 photography So I've been shooting some clips off this. So hopefully they come out pretty rad Who's at this park?  We got to wait. I can't see me. It's very dark. I live in But I don't really care Hopefully you guys enjoyed this video Short and sweet one. I know can you believe these things from 2008 and it still works takes little mini DB tapes So pretty keen to shoot some more stuff on this because it comes out sick I don't know why I had this tucked away for so many years. I'm super super glad that I was able to find this Let me know if you guys want to see more Filming with this. I might even do a vlog like a complete vlog just on this that could be sick Let me know what you guys think if you guys are new here Make sure you hit that subscribe button leave a thumbs up drop me a comment below Follow me on Instagram at E-Narcism if you're not following evening mob on Instagram yet as well Make sure you follow the mob Check out evening mob comm join the mob today. That's about it for this video guys Really had a lot of fun at that park really cool little park really peaceful little place Kernel as well such a small little town, but yeah, that's about it guys Thank you so much for watching the video shouts out to all the new subscribers. I'll catch y'all in the next one


Today I'm going to share a brief video with you about Freedom Charity, who are actually carrying out crowdfunding effort to try to continue the really good work that they do. Many of you may be aware of their work, so they work around things like dishonour based violence and forced marriage and more recently virginity testing. They do really incredible work, both rescuing individuals who are in need, great work supporting schools to educate pupils and teachers and families and also work around actually getting legislation changed. So they are a small charity who really punch above their weight, but like so many charities during the pandemic, their kind of fundraising has been really hard hit. So they are asking for people to donate to their crowdfunding campaign. I will, I hope that you will too, even if you can give a pound, it would be appreciated because it's also a sign of support for the incredible work that they do, trying to eradicate many forms of horrific abuse which should be in our history, not our future. The Freedom Charity, which aims to raise awareness and prevent child abuse, are keeping children safe. Freedom, thank you very much for coming in. Freedom Charity has just been a round table discussion at the Home Office with the Prime Minister. Freedom Charity, which supports young people. Freedom Charity. Freedom Charity. Freedom Charity. Freedom Charity. Freedom Charity. The Freedom Charity. The Freedom Charity. For ten years Freedom Charity has challenged abuse without fear or favour. All around the country, in the media, in the corridors of power, we have educated young people, rescued victims and advocated for survivors. But that has come at a cost and last year has hit us hard. We need to keep our vital work around forced marriage, FGM, dishonour abuse and now virginity testing. But we can't do that without your help. We urgently need funding to keep our programmes going, to keep educating young people and to keep rescuing victims. For ten years we have rescued the most vulnerable young people. But now we need your help to rescue us. Please give generously to our crowdfunding appeal.


Felly oedd yn unig yn y ddefnydd yma yma'r digud, yma, yn y taffwyr ar y cyfrannu ar y Llywodraeth yn y rhaid i beth o'i gweithio ar y series? Mae'n gorffodd yn ymgyrch, a mae'n gorffodd yn ddiddorol i ddiweddol yn ein golygu ar y gyrdd yn golygu'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r golygu a'u gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio ar y cyfrannu. Ac mae'n gael ddigon cymdeithasol yng Nghymru, ac mae hynny'n rhan o'r gweithio'r cyfwyrdd ac mae rhan o'r gweithio'r cyfwyrdd, mae'r Ynefin Mymysau hwnnaeth a dwi'n gweithio'r cyfwyrdd ar y cyfeirio newydd mewn cyfwyrdd a'r cyfwyrdd cyfwyrdd ar y gweithio'r cyfrannol. Mae'n gweithio ymddangos cyfwyrdd cyfwyrdd, Mae'r cyfnodd y mwyaf arall, yw 1993, dyma'n amlwg yma'r Ymryd Fyrwyr, ac mae'r Ymryd Fyrwyr yn ymryd Fyrwyr. A yna, mae'n rydyn ni wedi'i gorfa'r Ymryd Fyrwyr, ac mae'r ymryd Fyrwyr yn ymryd Fyrwyr, mewn ymryd Fyrwyr, ac mae'n ymryd Ymryd Fyrwyr. Mae'r Ymryd Fyrwyr yn ymryd Fyrwyr yn ymryd Fyrwyr er mwyn nhw'n gyrfa'r Ymryd Myrwyr. The Finnish Embassy, I think the first secretary there was called Ilka Pekka Simila and is now their ambassador in Vietnam and they had a sauna. So you don't usually expect to go to Cairo to meet a Croatian commissioner in the sauna, but there you are, it can happen. And many years later again, because unfortunately many years have passed, I was working on Southeast Europe while the EU called the Western Balkans a strange enough term, and I started my work and I looked to see some names and I saw that the Minister for European Integration of Croatia was Nevin Mimica. And now I find myself in this job in Irish aid and the commissioner for development is Nevin Mimica. So as I said, I've been following Nevin for years and looking up to him for years. And you're really welcome to Dublin today, Nevin. As I said, we've had a lot of discussions in this group and around the country on the sustainable development goals and the 2030 agenda. Ireland played a strong part in their negotiation, then in the co-facilitation of their adoption, as it were, and then our ambassador, David Donohue, who has also strong links to this institution, has spoken here of them. He then helped co-facilitate the outcome of the refugee and migration summit in September. So the issues facing us today in development for Ireland are really pertinent, really strong. We're combining a strong development cooperation program on the ground with a really strengthened policy engagement. And for us, it is essential that that policy engagement includes also the European Union, because we are, I think we just have to keep saying it and reminding everyone, we are strong, committed members of the European Union, completely committed to the principles and values that underpin the European Union. And I think the European Union's work in development epitomises all those values and all those principles. So we are really interested today, I can assure you it's a very good committed audience, we'll have many questions, on the new environment for development and especially the new European consensus for development, which is being discussed, negotiated and crucially is being consulted on. There's a huge consultation process on it and I think I hope that the commissioner sees his visit today as part of that consultation. So the floor is yours, commissioner. We look forward to hearing from you and I hope you can take as many questions and comments as possible from this very committed and informed audience. Welcome to Dublin and thank you very much. Well, good afternoon to everyone, dear colleagues, dear friends, distinguished guests and dear hosts. I'm really honoured to be today with you here with so committed and part of the development universe actually because what is now getting the right shape once the Sustainable Development Goals agenda is adopted. It's kind of a new development universe that is emerging and we are all part of it and therefore it is important to think together, to work together on making this universe as much of a use, as much of a contribution to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. This is the latest in a line of notable speakers in your development matters series of lectures, being part of this overall new development agenda contribution. As Ireland's leading think tank on global issues, the Institute for International and European Affairs brings together a broad range of public and private sector partners and provides expert analysis on the implication of emerging trends. It is precisely in this spirit of collaboration and consultation, the time here, to discuss the future of the European Union's development cooperation in times of global change. Yesterday, the 17th of October, was the international day of eradication of poverty. A stark reminder that despite the significant progress achieved during the last few decades, more than 800 million people still live on less than $1.25 a day and this is definitely 800 million people too many. Today, I would like to share with you my vision for a renewed European Development Policy, which I hope will mean we will no longer need such a day by the time we get to 2030. In 2015, the European Union and its member states were the driving force behind the number of landmark agreements reached in Sendai, in Addis Ababa, in New York and in Paris. With the 2030 agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, the international community made its first ever global and universal commitment to end poverty and achieve sustainable development in all its dimensions, social, economic, environmental. It makes us proud as Europeans that Ireland led this process alongside Kenya in the United Nations. You successfully united UN member states, civil society and the private sector behind a truly comprehensive and transformative post-2015 agenda. Now we are over one year into this 15 years journey. Some actions have already begun, but at the time when European and global leadership is needed more than ever, we need to do more than initial actions only. History will not judge us on ambitious agreements, but on meaningful results. Development is not about what we promise. Development is about what we do.  Alongside the global strategy for EU foreign security policy, the global strategy that was adopted in June this year at the European Council level, and new overarching initiative on how the European Union's internal and external actions will contribute to the implementation of the SDG. So these are two global overarching strategic documents, global strategy and overarching initiative on sustainable European future. Beside and on top of this, or stemming from these two strategic documents, I will present next month our proposals on how European Union development cooperation can deliver on the 2030 agenda. How our external actions in development should look like, our meaning Member States and European Union managed, European Commission managed development initiatives. In our jargon, this is about revising the European consensus on development, which has guided our actions since 2005. As we all well know, the world has become a very different place since then. To remain relevant, we have to adapt our tools and the ways of work to reflect the complexity of today's global development landscape. Let me be clear, this does not mean throwing everything out of the window and starting from scratch, nor does it mean watering down our principles and our values in the development cooperation. The Lisbon Treaty makes it clear that the core objectives of our development policy remain the eradication of poverty. And it also puts the emphasis on better coordination between the European Union institutions and our Member States, so that instead of having 29 development policies of 28 Member States plus the Commission working disjointedly, we foster a more coherent overall approach that avoids overlaps, makes full use of our respective strengths and maximizes Europe's impact in the world. As you may know, only one quarter of our overall development assistance comes from the EU, from the EU Budget and EU European Union Development Fund. And three quarters come from our Member States. Together, we are greater than the sum of our parts. For this reason, I have from the outset sought to make this development consensus exercise a truly inclusive process and not something drawn up behind closed doors in Brussels. We published an online public consultation this summer through which we received almost 200 replies and inputs from around the world. Many Irish organizations fed in through their international networks as well as civil society organizations based here. Our meeting today is a part of a series of a consultation that I'm holding directly in Member States. Just before we bring forward our proposals at the November Foreign Affairs Council. But this will not be the end of the process. The reason I spoke of a new consensus and not just of a new strategy is because I wish for a genuine agreement under the shared ownership of the EU institutions and all our Member States. A blueprint that can guide all our development actions for the years ahead. This is what we need. I'm pleased to say that the Irish government has been an active and supportive contributor in our discussions so far. I hope that we can agree on a new joint statement between the Commission, Parliament and Council and the Member States in the first half of the next year. The feedback from all of our consultation to date has been clear. We need to do more to do it better and to do it differently. In particular, we need to respond better to complex global challenges. This means recognizing the links between peace, security and development ensuring that all of our responses, including our development humanitarian and migration policies are consistent. This is a point that has come up emphathetically throughout my discussions, including most recently in Warsaw and in Munich. Again, using the jargon, it's about ensuring greater policy coherence for development as well as the overall coherence of our external actions. But how do we achieve this in practice? In my view, the most efficient way to get there is to give more prominence to cross-cutting drivers, which will be essential to deliver across the entire range of sustainable development goals. Among these cutting drivers, or cross-cutting drivers, I would include, for example, migration and mobility, sustainable energy, more private sector investments. But today, I would like to focus on two others, which are particularly close to my heart, women and young people. I feel especially motivated to talk about this here in Ireland, where you have a long legacy of appointing strong female leaders, both at home and in the European and international fora. You are among the few countries to be able to boast not one, but two former female presidents. So I know I'm preaching to the converted when I say that women and young people are the key to breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty. But without our reinforced concerted efforts, they will continue to be the first to suffer, particularly in conflict situations, as exploited workers, young brides and child soldiers. Women's rights and children's rights are human rights, and to paraphrase the words of Ireland's Mary Robinson, if we do not address the human rights violations of today, they will become the causes of conflicts tomorrow. To be truly sustainable, we must focus on the poorest and most vulnerable people in our societies. Despite some progress, significant gaps persist in terms of health, education, employment, representation and respect of basic human rights, and these inequalities persist in developed countries, just as in developing countries. In terms of education, 123 million young people around the world still lack access to reading and writing skills, and over 60% of those are women. This is exacerbated in times of crisis. My fellow commissioner, Christos Dylianides, was here just a week or two weeks ago to discuss precisely this issue with you earlier this month. The unemployment rate for young people worldwide aged 15 to 24 is over 13% and is set to rise, but simply having a job is not enough. 156 million young people in developing countries live in a working poverty, and around 40% of those who have a job still live on less than $3 a day. Claiming to strive for sustainable development while living behind the next generation is a blatant contradiction in terms. So, therefore, the motto of this all sustainable development goals agenda, leaving no one behind, really means that if we leave a single person, single child behind, we shall fail. We need to be able to offer a brighter future for our young men and women, both at home and abroad. They should have equal access to quality education and decent employment opportunities irrespective of their agenda, costs, ethnic or religious beliefs, disability or other status. Since the very start of my mandate, one of my top personal priorities is that women and girls are at the heart of the European Union's policy on development. With the second EU gender action plan, we now have a sound policy framework at the European Union's level. It provides the direction and the tools for the European Union and our member states to achieve sustainable development goal number five on gender equality and women's empowerment. Apart from specific actions to promote women's rights, we also want to ensure a full and comprehensive gender perspective in all our development programmes and all our activities. All sectors should contribute to gender equality. This includes women and girls empowerment in sectors such as justice, agriculture, energy or in vocational training. I'm sure that my dear colleague and your countryman, Commissioner Phil Hogan, would join me in emphasising the important contribution of sustainable agriculture for both women and young people. Most vulnerable people live in rural areas. Women make up to half of the agricultural labour force in many developing countries, but are often excluded from credit access also from training and basic services as well as land ownership and rights. The conclusion is self-evident. If we are serious about putting an end to poverty and hunger, we need to empower women by linking agriculture with new technologies and using strategies to encourage agribusiness. We can also avoid the rural to urban drift and make sustainable food production a more attractive career choice for young people. In 2015, we launched an initiative so-called agri-fi initiative, the agriculture financing initiative to increase and de-risk investments for the agriculture and agribusiness in developing countries. So far, 27 million euros have been allocated to support civil society, to create jobs and achieve inclusive and sustainable growth in agriculture-based value chains with a specific focus on women and youth. The lessons we learnt from this agri-fi initiative is also very clear.  You invest in an individual. If you invest in a female farmer, you invest in community. On a larger and more long-term scale, we proposed a new European external investment plan last month. This new plan aims to replicate the success of the internal investment plan for Europe, which has already benefited 1,000 small EU firms and startups, including here in Ireland. With the external investment plan, we want to open up new markets in Africa and the European Union neighbourhood by de-risking the potential costs to investors from both developing countries and Europe, including Irish investors. We want to mobilize European Union and foreign direct investment by leveraging funds from the European Union institutions, our member states, other donors, financial institutions and the private sector. This will help to bring much-needed resources to areas, to countries which would not otherwise receive financial support or investment support, including investments in infrastructure, small and medium enterprises and renewable energies, with a particular focus on creating opportunities for women and young people. With 4.1 billion euros from the EU budget and the European Development Fund, we could now leverage up to 44 billion of investments, or up to 88 billion by 2020 if, or I would say, when member states and other partners match our contribution to this fund. Just take a moment to reflect what a significant contribution that is. 88 billion euros. That is 20 billion more than the current total annual official development assistance of the European Union and the member states. In line with the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, this is a tangible example on how we hope to use official development assistance in a smarter way, as a part of financing package comprising aid, investments and domestic resources. This is so important if we want to move from the billions to trillions needed to implement the sustainable development goals. We need, I'm very grateful to Tishok and Akani for confirming at the UN summit for the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, Ireland's intent to work towards achieving the 0.7% of GNI as official development assistance target. We need to continue our efforts towards meeting this target. Ireland is already exceeding the 0.2% of GNI as a target for the least developed countries. I fully support the notion that we should target aid where it is most needed. And look forward to seeing other member states progressing in that direction of making our development assistance channeled mostly to the least developed countries, fragile countries, countries that are most in need. Least developed countries and fragile states undoubtedly deserve still the highest concentration of our official development assistance. But in the new consensus on development we also need to see how to adapt our partnerships to the increasingly diverse and evolving needs of our partner countries. For middle-income countries we will need to develop new relationships which gradually move away from money to knowledge that focus more on trade, foreign direct investment and knowledge sharing. And we need to shift from a culture of simply measuring how much we put in to measuring what we get out as a result of our development cooperation initiatives. I know that Ireland is committed to improving development effectiveness while improving partner-country ownership for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their own actions. We truly share this objective. I understand the Irish government is supporting a joint initiative with UN Women to increase the availability and use of gender-sensitive data in education, employment and asset ownership. These data-driven approaches will be essential in ensuring that we are on track to deliver on our global promises to men and women alike. So, ladies and gentlemen, Irish literary great and Nobel Prize winner, Simon Heaney, said, if you have the words, there's always a chance you'll find a way. Let us not leave it to chance. I just tried to have a few words that might show us the way, but I didn't manage to do it in a few words. I did it in 2000 and more words. But indeed, the essential elements that a future EU consensus on development should clearly address are now in front of us. I know that we have to look together forward to... and I really look forward to hearing your thoughts on how together we can best find that way of making European Union not only the biggest contributor to the official development assistance and to the new 2030 agenda, but of making European Union the best contributor and the best global actor in development policy. So, let's do it together. Your inputs, this discussion today, the previous public consultation, the forthcoming discussion on the draft consensus will definitely contribute to that. Thank you very much.


Okay, we're all set for recording. All right. I'll get started. My name's James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is August 31st, 2022. It's one o'clock and I call this meeting to order. Looks like, I mean, I've got quite a few remarks, so this might be a longer meeting today, but let me just get going. First, I just wanted to clarify something that I mentioned at our last meeting about cultivators that may have jumped the gun and started planting prior to being licensed by the board. Let me try to be as clear as possible. What you are doing is a crime. You are in criminal jeopardy if you're growing more than the home grow limits without a license. The cannabis board has no authority to direct law enforcement agencies or to stop state's attorneys from prosecuting crimes. And I apologize if that was not clear. The point that I was making is that the CCB will not penalize you. We will not revoke your application. We won't impose a fine or an administrative penalty or refer your case to law enforcement under the following conditions. First, you have a pending cultivation application before the board and you're making a good faith effort to complete the application. Two, you're operating within the scope of the license that you're seeking. If you applied for a tier one license, you can't have 2,500 square feet of canopy or more than 125 plants.  And finally, you can't be committing other crimes such as selling your products to the public, particularly to youth, moving cannabis across state lines, or inverting illegal cannabis into the legal market. So this is not an invitation to break the law. This is a recognition by the board that we asked the legacy market to go legal. And we're not going to punish the very people that took us up on this offer while we work through pending applications. Again, we can't control how law enforcement agencies will react if they get a complaint about an unlicensed grow. It's probably also important to discuss how the cannabis board interacts with law enforcement more broadly. This is one of those highly regulated industries that exists under the specter of state and federal criminal enforcement if you intentionally and sometimes unintentionally break the rules governing your license. The cannabis board is not a law enforcement agency and our compliance team are not law enforcement officers. We don't wear badges. We don't carry guns. We don't have the authority to arrest people or refer a case to a prosecutor. However, the legislature did grant the cannabis board primary compliance and enforcement authority over the adult and medical markets. We intend to take an education first approach. We know our rules are brand new and licensees might make good faith mistakes. And I'd like to take a moment to mention that our inspectors had visited over a hundred grow sites already and without fail, everyone is doing their best to follow the rules and operate within the scope of their license. So thank you for that. But if we receive a complaint or observe evidence of a violation, our compliance team will conduct an investigation. The results of that investigation may result in no action. It may result in a warning, a fine, a suspension of a license or any of the other administrative actions that are listed in our board rule number four. If we have credible evidence of criminal activity, we may need to refer the matter to a law enforcement agency for them to conduct their own investigation that may lead to a criminal referral. I would very much hope that these are the very rare cases, though. The primary law enforcement agency that we could be referring credible criminal investigations to is the Department of Liquor and Lottery. Their enforcement division is comprised of sworn law enforcement officers. We can't control the 100 or so law enforcement agencies around the state. If a local police department receives a complaint about a cannabis operation, they may come and investigate on their own, even if you're licensed. We are developing guidance for law enforcement and will be providing a training to hopefully get everyone on the same page. But to think that there's going to be 100% uniformity around the state, particularly early on, is probably unrealistic. But getting your license and complying with the board regulations is always your best defense when anyone shows up at your door, whether that's a CCB inspector, Department of Liquor and Lottery officer, or any other law enforcement officer. An update on licensing. You know, we haven't held meetings for the past two weeks in order to allow some of our staff here to catch their breath for the fall. But looking at the register for this week, it's hard to believe that anyone actually did take a break. We have over 60 applications up for approval, including a number of wholesalers and product manufacturers. The two integrated applications are near completion, and we've begun our review of retail applications. I'd remind everyone watching that retail applications are complicated and require jurisdictional input from many agencies that we cannot control or expedite. Fire safety, the Department of Taxes, there's local approvals, including local cannabis control commissions if they exist. There's the Department of Liquor and Lottery if you're going to be selling any kind of vape cartridge or vaping device. And then there's potential for Act 250 permits as well. In general, you need to have all of these approvals worked out before the CCB can issue you a license. So when you think about everything that goes into this, you know, I have a hard time believing we would have been able to license any significant number of retail applications in the one month period between September and October that the legislature prescribes in Act 164. October 1st remains our target date, but we can't make any promises. We want these licenses to be issued as much as anyone, but there's no way for us to cut corners. Our primary objective is to roll this market out safely, effectively and equitably, and we are not going to compromise that mandate in order to meet an arbitrary deadline. A quick update on the market and how it's shaping up. Our consultants have started to plug the raw data of our licensing numbers into their market analysis model. We have posted the updated model to our website, but unless you know how to use it and you know how to manipulate the underlying equations and assumptions, it can be a little inaccessible. Just one example, it has a random number generator in it to account for uncertainty around things like when the board was actually able to issue licenses and when licensees were actually able to be in operating. So this means that every time you open the model or hit F9, the model will spit out different results with respect to what this market will look like in year one and two. Also, every assumption built into the model, things like projected market share of flour versus vapes versus edibles, things like indoor versus outdoor cultivation, things like crop loss are adjustable. The default assumptions that are there when you open the model are our consultants best guesses based upon the data they received from our tourism department, from medical sales, from out of state data. But you can actually adjust all of those assumptions yourself and see how it changes the outcomes. I say all this just as a warning that this model is a very powerful tool and it's downloadable for anyone to use, but it can be kind of tricky to understand how it's working. Some of the assumptions that were made on good data are already proving wrong, for instance, now that the actual market is starting to take shape. But for anyone who wants to see kind of the updated projections, it's on our website ccb.vermont.gov. Some of the high level takeaways from the early numbers though is as of right now we've issued just short of 350,000 square feet of canopy. We have about the same amount left in pending applications. That number will change significantly after today after we approve kind of 60 additional applications. But the kind of total number, rough number of canopy in square footage is about 700,000. Our split between indoor and outdoor cultivation is skewing heavily towards outdoor. That's both in actual licenses issued, but also in the pending applications. If you take what we've already issued and add in the pending applications, we're about 35% indoor versus 65% outdoor. So that sort of breakdown is a very good start to the market. It's very good from an environmental perspective, but it does create some very important considerations. Certainly early on and probably into the long term, Vermont is not going to have enough testing or product manufacturing capacity to meet all of the market's needs at harvest time.  And ultimately you shouldn't rely on them being available right away, so you should also be thinking about storage. If you're a lab or a product manufacturer, please think about how you might be able to meet the increased seasonal demand for your services around harvest time. This sort of indoor-outdoor split can also lead to price instability at various times in the year. Just as a warning, our model does have some basic price assumptions based upon overall yields, but it doesn't take into consideration how prices may fluctuate throughout the year based upon harvest. Let me see a banking update. So via CCU, the Vermont State Employees Credit Union has temporarily paused adding new accounts for cannabis businesses. There is a ratio of cannabis accounts to compliance staff that is recommended by the National Credit Union Association, and via CCU has hit that quota. It's my understanding that they're currently seeking additional staff and will resume opening new accounts as soon as possible. I just didn't get any indication from them whether that will be in a few weeks or a few months. It's my understanding that the New England Federal Credit Union still has capacity to open new cannabis accounts. Also last week, the Vermont Federal Credit Union announced that they would begin opening cannabis accounts in Vermont. Both of those organizations' contact information is available on our website. Incidentally, an organization called the PBC just updated their banking cannabis directory. There are a number of cannabis-specific banks that claim to operate nationally. I don't know anything about these banks, and this is certainly not an endorsement of any of them, but I did run their names by the Department of Financial Regulation. And DFRs verify that they're all legitimate financial institutions and all have deposit insurance through either the FDIC or the NCUA. So we're going to post those banks, those financial institutions, along with their contact information to our FAQ page under banking. And as soon as we get an update from VSECU, we'll communicate that out as well. Inventory tracking, I mentioned a few times in the past, but we are going to go in a slightly different direction on inventory tracking than many other states. You're not going to need to put RFID tags on every plant or update your inventory each day. You do need to track very specific data points about your inventory and how it's moving both within your business and through the supply chain. You'll need to report that data to the board at regular intervals. With the help of a third-party analytics firm, the board's going to be tracking that data and analyzing it for irregularities and suspicious activity. But from a financial and human capital perspective, this system is a lot less intensive than what is required in some of the other major inventory tracking platforms. We have an agreement almost finalized with the company that's going to build the data reporting portal. It's going to be an extension of our licensing portal, and you should be able to access it directly through your CCB login, and it will be Salesforce-based. That sort of functionality and integration is not going to be ready until sometime this fall, though. So in the meantime, licensees will be required to submit their inventory records directly to the board through an online web-based form that will be available on our website. The Agency of Digital Services has built these forms for us, but they're currently being tested, validated, and debugged. I do expect them to be ready hopefully by the end of the week, maybe early next week. And our plan is to release both these specific inventory tracking data points for each license type as well as these online forms where you can report your inventory as soon as possible. When everything's ready, we can do a walkthrough of them at one of our next meetings hopefully next week. We also posted our testing requirement flowchart that's available in our guidance document as well, or in our guidance section of our website. Few basic administrative details. So this is kind of a special message for anyone who's filling out license applications on behalf of another person or a business. CSI, who conducts our background checks, has let us know that a bottleneck is forming in their processes due to a lack of communication from principals, financiers, owners, anyone who they're conducting background checks on. You know, sometimes they need to be in touch with the actual person that they're conducting a background check on, but they noted that sometimes the only contact information they have is for the law firm or the representative that filled out the application and not for the owner or principal themselves. So we've updated our forms, our application to stress that when it comes to these folks, the financiers, the owners, the principals, that we'd like you to put the people's actual contact information, not just the law firm's contact information. And we think this will speed things up significantly. Finally, the tax department has updated its cannabis tax guidance document. It's very user friendly. It's easy to understand. And you can find that at tax.vermont.gov slash business slash industry slash cannabis. And we also link to it on our guidance page. So, other than that, I just, we just need to approve the minutes from our last meeting, which was on August 10, 2022. Kyle and Julie, have you had a chance to look at those minutes? Yes. Yes. All right. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay. So we, this is the last meeting from our prior meeting schedule, regular meeting schedule. So we need to adopt our meeting schedule for the kind of remainder of the year. I know we circulated a document internally, but is it, can we pull that up? Is that accessible? Sorry, I didn't mean to spring that on you. No, I should be able to find it in my, in my inbox. Essentially, we're going to keep the same meeting schedule Wednesdays at one, but I think it's worth pulling it up because I think there's a few dates that fall on holidays. I haven't pulled up, Brent, if you're not able to find it. I've got it. I've got it now. All right. Thanks, though. Okay. So these are the proposed meeting dates for the remainder of this calendar year. The idea would be to stick with our current time of Wednesdays at one o'clock, except for a few exceptions. And those exceptions are noted. So we've got September 7, September 14, September 21, September 28. And then our first October meeting will be on October 6, which is a Thursday. And then the remaining meetings in October, the 12th, 19th and 26th are all Wednesdays. November will be the first three Wednesdays, which are the second, the ninth and the 16th Thanksgiving week. We will not hold a meeting. So we will skip the 23rd and then meet again on the 30th of November. And then again, December 7th, 14th and 21st are all Wednesdays. And then the last week of December, we will skip a meeting on the 28th. Great. Is there a motion to approve this regular meeting schedule? I move that the cannabis control board accept the meeting schedule as presented by staff. We'll second. Any discussion at all? Nope. Looks good. Hi. Okay, Bryn. I'll turn things back over to you. Okay. So we'll start your register as we always do with some information about the medical cannabis program. The data that you see in this week's register is for a number of weeks since we last met. So it's from August 10th until yesterday, the 30th. So in that time, we've received 56 new patient applications and 163 renewal applications. And we've issued 205 patient cards. Received three new caregiver applications and six renewal caregiver applications. And we've approved for and we've also approved for employee, dispensary employee cards. And as noted here, our staff are currently processing applications received on or after July 27th. So that does put us about four days outside of our 30 days set for a window. And we staff are aware that we are outside of this range. We've been in contact with patients who have pending applications and we are developing some efficient fees to improve our timing and being able to process these applications. So hopefully we'll see an improvement there next week. So now we'll move on to our adult use license applications. And this data is upstate as of yesterday. So a little bit of a wall of numbers here. I'll try and point out a few things of interest. The board has 63 full license applications that are recommended for licensure by staff this week. The majority of those are mixed tier one cultivators also have nine outdoor cultivators up for recommendation this week. And we have three tier two manufacturers up for recommendation this week and two wholesalers. And then we have some stragglers, one indoor tier five, one mixed tier two and then four outdoor cultivators that are not a tier one. And you can see that we've got 19 retailers in the few for review. And as the chair pointed out earlier, some of these applicants are currently under review on staff have not updated that status for everybody. I just want to remind everybody that staff are really prioritizing reviewing these applications. And there are times that they are not able to update the status of that application exactly when they start reviewing it. So we are still developing our internal processes and this is something that we will improve on as time goes on. But I want to make everybody aware of that. Can I just make a make a point here based on this chart, which is it looks like when I look at the kind of submitted received under review numbers for cultivators. It looks like we are largely through our backlog. I know that there's some in incomplete status usually that means that it's incumbent upon the license the applicant to do to take an action. And there's some in resubmitted but for the most part it looks like we're through our cultivator backlog. Correct. Yes, the team is very excited about that. That's great. Okay, so I'm going to move on to our recommendations for this week. They have a long list. So I'm going to jump right in. And given the fact that we have a long list. I'm just going to go through a by submission number and license type. So we've got submission 13 applying for mixed tier one submission 68 applying for indoor tier one submission 103 mixed tier one submission 125 indoor tier one submission 139 indoor tier 141 indoor tier one 143 indoor tier one 146 indoor tier one 206 and mixed tier one 226 indoor tier one 238 indoor tier one 253 mixed tier one 284 outdoor tier one 285 mixed tier one 286 mixed tier one 290 mixed tier one 296 mixed tier one 297 mixed tier one 308 indoor tier one 309 mixed tier one 315 mixed tier one 322 mixed tier one 331 outdoor tier one 336 indoor tier one 339 mixed tier one and 347 indoor tier one. Next stage submission 362 indoor tier one 367 outdoor tier one 371 mixed tier one 417 mixed tier one 432 indoor tier five 440 outdoor tier four 469 mixed tier one 535 outdoor tier four 582 mixed tier one 584 mixed tier three 590 mixed tier three 605 outdoor tier one 615 outdoor tier two 629 mixed tier one 685 outdoor tier three 703 indoor tier one 718 mixed tier two 740 outdoor tier two 741 outdoor tier one 755 mixed tier one 765 outdoor tier two 766 outdoor tier two and 803 outdoor tier three H3 828 outdoor tier one 837 indoor tier one 895 indoor tier one 912 is a wholesaler 917 tier two manufacturing 926 tier two manufacturing 975 wholesaler submission 1000 outdoor tier one 1017 tier two manufacturing 1024 indoor tier one 1029 outdoor tier one 1032 mixed tier one 1290 outdoor tier one 1360 outdoor tier one and that is your full list all of these applicants have demonstrated compliance with board rule and statute and staff is recommending them for full licensure. I will move on now to the social equity portion actually first we have a new addition to your register this week which is some staff on license amendments and amendments are any change to your application. The application that a licensee needs to update their application in any way that wouldn't trigger a license renewal that is considered a license amendment. So we've got some numbers for you here so we have mixed cultivator tier one who is licensed to is seeking an amendment and an outdoor tier one cultivator who is licensed to is seeking an amendment. This can be quite minor updates to contact information or even like a typo and a business name. So these are amendments that don't require board approval. This is some statistics for you to review. So moving on to the social equity stat. We have nine social equity applicants that are up for licensure this week. As you can see we've got many in incomplete or we submitted status about 25. And we approved or issued about 42 licenses to social equity applicants that put those at around 90 90 applicants who have social equity status or seeking social equity status that are in the process. Or have a like or have a social equity license. And then we have four recommendations for social equity status this week. We have submission. 895 staff are recommending social equity status for this applicant as they meet the criteria for social equity individual applicant is the sign and board rule. Submission 1163 they're recommending social equity status for this applicant as they meet the criteria for social equity business applicants as defined and board rule. Submission 923 are staff are recommending social equity status for this applicant that they meet the criteria for social equity business applicant. Submission 916 also recommended for social equity status as they meet the criteria for a social equity business applicant. And lastly we've got four applicants that staff are recommending that the board deny social equity status for submission 740 and submission 567. Both of these applicants do not meet the criteria for social equity individual applicant as defined and board rule. Submission number 723 staff are recommending denial for this applicant that they don't meet the criteria for social equity business applicant. And lastly submission number 91 staff also recommend denial of social equity status for this applicant as they don't meet the criteria for social equity individual applicant and board rule. And staff are ready to discuss these social equity status denial and executive session with the board. Great. Well it's a tremendous amount of work. Thank you for even just reading it was kind of a lot of work. But thank you for that. So, yes, I think what I heard is that the board should be going into executive session to discuss the social equity status denial recommendations by the staff. I think that's we should do that before we approve the other 63 licenses and other recommendations. Yep. Is there another item that we need to discuss in executive session as well. Yep, there are the board should discuss the staff recommendations for social equity status denial. And also there is one applicant is up for recommended licensure this week. So, those have a presumptively disqualifying sense on their record. Okay, any sense of how long we'll need for executive session. I would, I'm going to estimate at least 30 minutes. Great. Well, is there. So before we vote on any of these we're going to go into executive sessions there a motion to tend to our executive session. We've approved that the CCB go into executive session to consider confidential attorney client communications made for the purpose of providing professional legal services to the body. And that the executive session is required because premature general public knowledge regarding such communications would clearly place the board at substantial disadvantage. The board expects Susana Davis executive director of the Department of Racial Equity and Jay Green, the racial equity research and policy analyst to join effective session. Second. All in favor. Hi. Okay, so why don't we say if it's 136 right now why don't we come back like five after two. And we'll shoot for that. Sometimes these do go a little bit long, but we'll shoot for just a little bit after two o'clock to return. All right, are we ready? Is everyone ready to resume? Yep, let's do it. Okay. So, just for a time check it's 215 we ran a little bit long. Sorry about that. So the executive this session, the board was looking at kind of the rationale behind the staff's referrals for the social equity denials and then also the rationale to recommend approving a applicant that had a presumptively disqualifying offense. And we kind of listened to their reasoning and we're ready to now vote as a board on their recommendations. And I think we can just lump them all together because I think the general gist was we're going to approve all the staff recommendations. So is there a motion for that? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations for as presented to us in this meeting. I second. Any discussion before the vote? No. Nope. Just again, as you mentioned a couple times pepper thank you to everybody even during the so-called time to take vacation still rocking it so it's impressive. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Okay. Well, all in favor. Hi. Hi. Great. And just to be clear that was for all the staff recommendations including the 63 licenses that we just approved. So that's great. Thank you. Just as you mentioned Kyle to the staff for their diligent work. And I think if I'm right, all we have left to do today is public comment. So yep. All right. So why don't we do that? Thanks to everyone who joined the meeting today and kind of sat through the executive session. If you'd like to make a public comment, we'll start with the people to join via the video link. You can just raise your virtual hand.  And then we'll move to people to join via the phone. Thank you so much for your time for public comment, Keith. Oh, CCB. How are you today? Go ahead. Thanks. I just have a question on your track and trace system that you're going to be implementing. Why is Vermont going to be the outlier out of 20 states in the nation that are using metric and metric is designed for track and trace and accountability for consumers and everything else. It's very low cost to state of the mall or any other states that has been using it and it has excellent information through their portal and through their team trainings. And it's very low cost. It's it doesn't cost anything for the licensee holders to use that thing, but to buy the tags or to use a laptop to put their inventory in. And that's all I need. I've spoken to one of their visit their government representatives. Her name is Jean, and she said she would love Vermont to pick metric to use. And it's very it's not complicated at all. So I'm just wondering why you guys are choosing to be the outlier out of 20 legal states using metric rather than going with metric. Just out of curiosity. And then one other question. Will you guys be conducting more roundtables for the medical patients of Vermont? Thanks for the questions. And generally we don't turn this into kind of a question and answer session. It's really meant for people to provide comments to the board. However, we do note your questions and we try to kind of respond to them at our next meeting or kind of if there's kind of common questions that get answered or asked, then we update our guidance document. But I'll kind of talk about track and trace at our next meeting, I suppose, and why we chose the path that we did. And yeah, thanks for the questions. Next tree frog farms. Thanks for everything you guys have done. I was just looking for more recommendations or clarity info on as the track and trace system will develop this year. After drying for curing and storage purposes, we'll be able to gather like strains into the same containers and kind of kind of bulk up. You know, we've harvested this from these 10 plants, but once now they're dried, they could all be stored or cured together and kind of lumped into their own trackability. Thanks. Yeah, thank you. And again, I think our goal, hopefully, is to kind of walk through and more detail track and trace next week if we're ready. Otherwise, very soon after, and we can kind of dig into some of these questions. Shannon. Shannon. Hi, I just wanted to make a quick comment on packaging. I know it's probably been something guys have been hearing a lot, but we I think we finally came to a solution for us, but I know getting there was very difficult. There's not. Can you really maybe release something that has very clear guidelines on it? Because there's really not. It sends you on a wild goose chase to find all the different statues and what's required. And also just to note that I understand why you're going in a green direction with packaging, but it's very expensive. And a lot of these manufacturers have very high minimums to get 10 products to get glass with wooden lid products to get anything customized like that. And so for a startup family businesses, small businesses, that's a huge upfront cost to be putting out, you know, 20 to $30,000 to get containers in different sizes with the 5,000, 10,000 minimum order. So just want to put that out there for everyone who's frustrated and struggling with this. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Shannon. Tito. Hi there, hopefully everybody's having a great day. I'm just, I just want to make one comment when it comes to the disclosing the location of licensees. I know we've been through a lot with that conversation. And currently it's landed on just disclosing the town that you're in, but I'd really like to see that move to the county. I still think that the county accomplishes the goal of transparency yet is also vague enough to protect growers whose buildings cannot be hidden from the road always. And sometimes these towns are really small and it's just too hard to hide. And also I've heard a lot that the state requires any business to give them their physical location. And it's actually the state just requires a physical location, not the actual physical location necessarily where your cannabis is being grown. So I just wanted to point that out. And I really hope that you guys can find it to switch to counties. I think that would do the trick. Thank you everybody. Hope you have a great day. Yeah, thanks, Tito. Anyone else who joined via the link, please raise your virtual hands. And then also if you've joined via phone and would like to make a public comment, just hit star six to unmute yourself. Keith, I see your hand up, you know, as a as a role during these meetings, we don't do. What's that? It was a mistake. I was moving my mouse. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No problem. Dave Silverman. Thanks for all the work and thanks to the staff for all the work they did the last two weeks really showed the number of applications. I know that there are still a lot of manufacturer applications in the queue. And given the race against the clock to get products into stores, I'm going to repeat a public comment I made a few meetings ago about the potential for expediting the CSI background check process for those pending applications. My sense is your process is to wait until the initial staff review before authorizing CSI background checks, the CSI background checks, then take a week, possibly two weeks, depending on the complexity. If there's any way for your manufacturing applicants that are in the queue to push that forward for the CSI check before the initial staff review is done, get them done so that there's not an additional wait after the initial review. That would be very, very helpful to anybody who wants to open retail on October 1. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. Anyone else for public comment? Either virtually or on the phone. And again, the phone at star six to unmute yourself. We'll close the public comment window. Again, you can always reach out to the board. If you go to ccb.info at vermont.gov, it goes out to all of our inboxes. Any comments you want to make there. And other than that, we'll see you next Wednesday during the meeting. Thank you.


From VOA Learning English, this is the Education Report in Special English. More and more children in Liberia are leaving school to work in diamond mines. 15-year-old Mike Coleman dropped out of school several months ago. He left to search for diamonds in Western Liberia to help his parents. The country's Ministry of Lands, Mines and Energy says that Liberian diamond mines employ at least 1,500 children. Nora Kwai is the head of a junior high school in Western Liberia. She says that more than 200 students, half of the school dropped out this year to work in the mines. Liberia's unemployment rate is nearly 85%. The World Bank estimates that 95% of the country's population lives on less than $2 a day. Work in the diamond mines is difficult and dangerous, but the possibility of earning $50 for each diamond is too good for many people to turn down. Employing anyone under the age of 18 in diamond mines is illegal, but many mine operators are willing to hire children who are small enough to fit into the narrow tunnels and tight spaces of mines. Thomas Wallay heads the Liberia Mining Entity in Western Liberia. He says a worker's age does not matter to mine owners. And he says the operators do not force children to work for them. But Mr. Wallay says the Ministry of Education should put measures in place to keep students in school. The United Nations Security Council helped ban the mining and export of so-called blood diamonds in Liberia in 2001 during the country's civil war. But the United Nations ended the ban in 2007. The diamond mines are again operating, increasing the demand for young workers. For VOA Learning English, I'm Carolyn Presuti.


You got to take the first step and sometimes you'll get met the other way. So sometimes when you step out in faith a little bit and you do stuff that you wouldn't expect to work, but it's the right thing to do, all of a sudden it starts working. Sometimes you can quit one of those three jobs that you might have or quit one of those two jobs and figure out a way to make more money with just one job. If you have no faith and faith to me is being able to get excited for something before it happens. See a lot of people, they can't get excited for something until it happens. Well that's not how the world works. If you're fat and overweight you have to get excited about what it'll be like to be skinny because that's how you get the motivation to work out. That's what faith is to me.


In number 17, we have another example that you may recognize once you write out your trigonometric ratio. Angle A, we have the adjacent leg, which is 8, and the hypotenuse, which is 16. So we are looking at cosine of angle A equals adjacent over hypotenuse, 8 over 16. Now, if you reduce 8 over 16, that's going to equal 1 half. Now, what kind of triangle do we know has a ratio of 1 to 2? Hopefully your answer is the 30-60-90 triangle. You would be correct. And if we have this side is 1 and this side is 2, that means this is root 3. And so what angle is always opposite of root 3? That would be the 60 degree angle. Now, again, if you enter this in your calculator, inverse cosine of 1 divided by 2, you will get 60 degrees. Number 18 is a little trickier. We want to figure out the measure of angle A, but that means that we need to know what this side is, what BD is. You have a couple of ways to figure that out, one of which would be Pythagorean theorem because you know that DC is 12 and BC is 12 root 2. And you know this is a right triangle, so you could use Pythagorean theorem, but much quicker would be to recognize that this is a special right triangle. If you look at triangle BDC, if you recognize that DC is 12 and BC is 12 root 2, this has to be a 4590 triangle. So if DC is 12, that means that BD also has to be 12. Again, you should get the same answer if you do Pythagorean theorem. It just takes you a little bit longer. Okay, so now that we know BD is 12, now I can set up to solve for angle A. I have the opposite leg which is 12 and the hypotenuse which is 13. And so that's going to be sine, sine of A equals 12 over 13. And if I go to my calculator and enter inverse sine of 12 divided by 13, I will find out that the measure of angle A is 67.4 degrees. So number 18 is kind of a two-part problem. You first have to figure out using this triangle, you have to figure out BD. And then to find angle A, you're going to use this triangle, ABD. Number 19 is a similar problem to number 18. What we're going to start off with is looking at this triangle BDC. Right away we see it is a 4590 triangle. So that means if CD is 4 root 2, then BC is also 4 root 2. And the hypotenuse BD, if you use the special right triangle rules, if this is 4 root 2 and this is 4 root 2, how do we figure out the hypotenuse? Well remember that this is x, x and x root 2. Well, so that means that x is equal to 4 root 2. So BD is going to be 4 root 2 times root 2. That's going to equal 4 root 4. And because the square root of 4 is 2, 4 times 2 is 8. So that means that BD is 8. Now I have the information I need to be able to find angle A. And so now I'm going to focus on triangle ABD. And because I have opposite and hypotenuse, that's going to be sine of angle A equals the opposite, which is 8 over hypotenuse, which is 10. And so if I evaluate inverse sine of 8 over 10, we find out that angle A should be about 53 degrees. So angle A is 53.1 degrees.


So if you don't know a little bit about my personal story, when I was about 12, that was the start of spirituality and like a religious focus for me. I had basically like this vision in theology class, which is ironic because it was a very pagan vision. But in any case, this started me down the path to studying spirituality, to starting to meditate daily, to read hundreds of books. I mean my library back home, way back in my parents' house, is still books on mysticism and shamanism and meditation and natural medicine. And eventually this culminated when I was 21 on a vision quest that I went to in the Sahara Desert, where I did a solo in a little cave surrounded by sand dunes with no food for five days. And otherwise, that three-week trip made me realize so many huge things about spirituality, but also some negative things. And in this video, I want to share what some of those are the big negative was. Hey guys, I'm Alex Hine, author of the book Master of the Day. Now the big revelation for me was that unfortunately, of all the other vision questers there that were with me, too many people in my observation blamed their lack of whatever success, relationships, health finances, on God or unknown forces or the universe rather than on the flaws in themselves, in their own characters. And to me, this was pretty obvious, you know, people would come and one person came because their marriage was failing or they were always horrible in relationships. And another came because she was always overweight and struggled with food and was wondering what the divine purpose of it all was. And one guy had a lack of success in business and he was about to go under. And all of these people had issues going on, including myself of course, mine was more existential. After I got to know them over the three weeks that we were in the desert together, it was obvious that they had just like myself deeply ingrained personality flaws. They were traits that were way more likely to be the true cause of their failure in whatever aspect of life. The one person that was always talking about food being a problem and massively overweight, well, she was blaming everyone.  And then the guy that was unsuccessful in business was, oh, I hate, I'm a massage therapist, I hate having to lose business and learn all this money stuff and learn marketing and learn sales and sell people into getting massages. And it was this victim mentality, like life is so unfair. Like, why do I have to do this? This is not what I want to learn. Just the constant victimization of himself. And the sad thing to me was that these people were thinking it was destiny, or it was fate, two very dangerous words, that this is the reason why they were unsuccessful. When to me, maybe those things were, but what's more likely, let's start with what's more likely. There's a lot of complaining coming out of your mouth. There is not a very strong work ethic in your past. There is a no desire to learn business and actually try and be successful in your past. And so it's like, do you want to blame it on God or these unknown forces and just say it was destined to be, when in reality, it's easier to blame God or the divine or the unknown as humans always have through our history. It is easier to blame the unknown than to look oneself in the face in the mirror and realize there are things I have to improve about myself in order to reach the goals and build the kind of life that I want. And the big revelation for me at this point was the realization that you know what, maybe I should just focus on improving my character, especially my character flaws, rather than trying to access some divine wisdom to improve my life when it seemed like so many of the people that I idolized that were spiritual and had long cultivation practices were still the same flawed people just in a different way. The people that I idolized that were still meditators, but were still very unfit and didn't take good care of their health. Well, I didn't admire them for that. Apparently, there was a lack of consciousness surrounding that and the same people that were meditated so long, but had all these beliefs about money, that money's dirty, that money's the root of evil, that having any money is classified as greed. And this is just silly to me. Something that was so obviously a belief and not a fact, when meditation I believe is a quest for truth. The very first step in almost all spiritual practices is clear. Because when one is clear, the stories, the narratives don't interfere with reality and cloud reality. It's that murky water, letting it settle, analogy. And yet all the people that I had been around were so clearly murky, usually in one aspect of their life, usually finances or health, their physical body or relationships. And so it made me wonder, is spiritual practice the most important part of my life or should self-cultivation, improving my flaws, be the core focus. And I chose the latter. And the other thing for me was that I realized when I understood that it was about me and maybe destiny and fate is real, maybe it's fate that I entered Chinese medicine, maybe it's a greater purpose beyond this is just something I love or YouTube or writing my books, I don't know. But what I do know for a fact is I cannot control those things. And what I can control is my natural inclinations, my effort, my work ethic, the desire to work on my flaws and the personality traits that are good. And that puts me in a state of control. Because it is of course easier to blame the unknown, the invisible than to take action, look oneself in the mirror, realize I have issues and these things I have to improve and then do what it takes to live a better life.  This has only been my own personal experience. And this is also why I transitioned heavily in my mid 20s to personal development, focusing on improving myself, the kind of person I need to be to reach all my goals holistically, whether they are spiritual or material or anything in between. And so that's just been a bit about my own challenge, my own story. And maybe I realized like I did the only thing that holds us back from the next level, whatever the next level may be in any aspect of life is not the unknown forces. It's the known forces first. Start with what you know to be true. Do you have the kind of discipline where you can work every day towards your goals? Are you aware of what your flaws are? And are you working on them? If there's a repeated part of your life where you're not getting results, relationships, health, finances, look at your habits first. Start with the habits of thinking and the habits of doing before you blame God or you blame the Dow or some non material presence for your lack of success in life.   However you define that word success. And I will catch you in the next video.


Few sailors realized that without Grace Hopper, computer technology might not exist as we know it today. Born in 1906, Grace Marie Hopper earned a Ph.D. in mathematics from Yale and later taught math at Vassar College. When World War II broke out, she was commissioned in the Navy as a Lieutenant J.G. Hopper became the first programmer on the Navy's Mark I computer, a mechanical marvel of its day. On September 9, 1945, Lieutenant Hopper coined the term computer bug after an unlucky moth flew inside one of the Navy's computers. This was the first time a computer was debugged, and the moth was taped into their logbook. After the war, Hopper persuaded businesses around the country that computer languages could be written in English instead of numbers. She became the co-creator of COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, which is still one of the most widely used programming languages. So many things ahead that we have to do. Well, we need tremendous amounts of information, correlated, easy to access, only at the beginning. Soon after her retirement from the reserve in 1966, Hopper was recalled to active duty for six months. This became an indefinite assignment when the Navy decided they couldn't lose her expertise. Grace Hopper became a rear admiral in 1985 and retired a year later. Of all her accomplishments, Hopper considered her greatest to have been her 43 years of training young service members. I think we all too often forget that the greatest natural resource we have is our young people. They are our future. The Navy honored Admiral Hopper by naming an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer USS Hopper. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Brandy Wills.