In Amazonia we heard this morning even 40% of the soil carbon stock. So there's a huge resource of carbon in these peatlands, and it's important to get the conservation right and the restoration for mitigation. So you may actually ask yourself, what can I learn now? In the last session we had actually some of us had a global peatland initiative site event last week in Bonn in the sub-star climate conference. We also had a C4 European Space Agency in the University of Vienna site event in the same venue also last week, and we had a three-day global peatland initiative workshop this week. So what is new now in this session? I think we have a very distinguished panel here that is also new in this composition in all these events so far in the last weeks, and so we are going to learn a lot of new things, and so I think it's going to be very exciting. It's important that we have precise data on peatlands, and that's part of the presentations that are going to talk about that, and it's important that we also get restoration right, and that's what other speakers are going to talk about. Before we get into the presentations by the speakers, I'd like to show one slide myself. I don't know, are the slides showing? Are they on that screen or? Can you show this slide? Yesterday I made a little piece of research looking at the NDC registry, you know the NDCs are the National Determined Contributions, the way the Paris Agreement is going to be filled with activities from the bottom up, and I looked for search terms, forestry, 139 submitted NDCs, it's a little bit lower number than the INDCs, but I just looked at the NDCs, 100 times forestry comes up, 89 times land use comes up, 68 times forest comes up, and then it goes down coast, 20 times mangrove, 18 times lake, 10 times wetland, 6, and not all of them are tropical, and then if you look at peatlands or any other peat-related terms, there is zero, so I think we need to do a little bit more in order to move peatlands up into the NDCs, into the awareness of policy makers and put them into the policy activity in those countries, policy action in those countries. Of course, the peatlands may be implicit when you talk about forests, when countries talk about land use and so on, but I think it may be necessary that there is a little bit more attention given to this particular ecosystem, and so that's what I'd like you to keep in mind to frame this session a little bit in terms of where we want to go with peatlands in climate action. And that's all I have to say myself right now. I'd like to move into the presentations and the first speaker will be Daniel Modiasso. As I said before, he's my colleague, he's a researcher, he has a PhD in forestry and meteorology from University of Reading before he had studied in IPB in Bogor, the Agriculture University. He has also been working in the IPCC a lot and he has been Deputy Minister of Environment for two years in 2001 and that capacity was also a national focal point for the IPCC and for the CBD. And so now he's a very cherished colleague in CIFOR and leading what we call the SWAMP project, which is just a very convenient acronym for the Sustainable Wetlands and Adaptation and Mitigation Program. So Daniel will tell you a little bit about the new peatland map and Daniel you have to stand on this thing here because that's the only microphone we have. Thank you Christopher for the introduction and I was standing like Christopher last week exactly on Thursday chairing a session in SUBSTAR on this particular topic. Now I'm presenting it, but I want to assure you that what I'm trying to describe today, can you have the slides please? Slightly different in the context of this GLF, why it matters and who matters for whom and I want to make sure that the history of developing this map, it is not a final product. It is a living document. If you visit the landscape lab right in the corner there is an interactive map that everybody can follow through the website. So the title here is, it is new but also interactive. So I will tell you why it's new and how it can be interactive. So it is new because it was published two weeks ago in the Global Change Biology and we try a new approach in terms of developing this. First it is a medium kind of moderate kind of scale. We use MODIS, that's free for everybody and it's not very fine but we cover global wetland. So it's a huge data set that we have and try to extract the best data and we look at it from 2010 to 2012 and the average is somewhere around 2011. That's the anomaly of the climate. So don't be surprised if you find numbers overestimated because it's La Nina year. So when we are talking about wetland the globe was very wet at that time. It is new because we try to use what we call expert system. Experts mean that we don't impose our intention to do things. We use the best available data and it is there and we use it. First of all is to look at the water balance of the globe to look at the input and output so we see what's the remaining or the deficit if you wish. And another layer is the topography so that we know where these surpluses will be accumulating and use the SRTM to look at that so we can see how wet the surface is. So we have that classification of wet soil in the map. So we have wetland map and the next challenge is how to put a layer of pitland. So again, the expert says that if you have, this is the definition we adopted organic material more than 30 centimeters, that's pit. So like it or not, that's what is the rest of the word. Define it and if the pit is more than 50% organic material then that's even finer in terms of information and that is about 30-29% of carbon in it. So from wetland we have bitland and that's global. So this is the expert system we try to adopt it here. The map you can see it in the website is global but I want to highlight what's there. We found that wetland and pitland is found more in Latin America instead of Asia. So we found 46% of the global pitland is in Latin America not in Asia. Asia is second and my country, Brazil, is the largest larger than Indonesia and the remaining is in Africa. So that's the thing that we ourselves are kind of surprised so it's different. Again, because we use different definition or the definition that we adopted and we use 2011 as La Niña year. If we zoom it in this area the Maranjon in Peru I'm glad that Peruvian scientists are here and then also the work in Peru are represented and in Congo Basin and in Indonesia there are different kind of density in terms of carbon because we also managed to assess the depth and also the carbon content in each of this. Again this is the limitation we have. We only have somewhere around 300, 350 data set data point across the globe. So this map invites you if you are expert to work into more detail. The area is there. The the file is downloadable. If you look at the map that we have here basically you look at you can interact with this map and you can find where the wetlands are, where the pitlands are and then you zoom it in a country and then you can download the data in this format. So you can work it out. That's why it is interactive so that we also want to make sure you register so we have the record who are visiting and contributing so that at the end of the day we will be able to improve the map that we have. So the next step what we are going to do is we are going to look at the map of the life and living kind of map. We will improve it by having people validating the map. As I said it is only one year so we need to scale it down in terms of temporal resolution. If people have the chance to look at the phenology and then it is not there at the moment that we only work in lowland pitland. We have not done the mountain pit and that's huge in Peru, in China, in highland of Africa also. So it is still untouched and it is not done. And in the context of this forum we are talking about exploring pitland or wetland. If we have final resolution in terms of time, we might be able to monitor time by time the degraded pitland so that we can do the locust, the scoping of the area and the situation and direction or trend of degradation as well. So in the global context as Christopher mentioned the importance of pitland for climate change mitigation and adaptation is already there about three years, four years ago. We were invited by the sub-star of the UN and they intentionally run a workshop like what we did last week especially to look at high carbon reservoir which include pitland, mangrove and wetland. And it is there in the agenda and it was not in the agenda item of the UNFCCC. So hopefully from now on wetland, pitland will be an agenda item. If you know the process in the sub-star in the COP APA is, I think it's got 13 agenda items now. I hope pitland will have more and more in terms of attention from the negotiator because it is very timely now to look at again, methodology is speaking IPCCC was asked by the UNFCCC to develop the methodology to do the accounting or inventory of greenhouse gases of carbon in wetland. So this is a special report a supplement to the 2006 guideline and the most important thing from that document is the methodology for wetland including pitland and mangrove. And lastly as Christopher mentioned in the beginning if we relate this kind of work and try to capture what is the need of the national government NDC is one because we see a lot of countries where you can see people already use NDC as an entry point. And again it is a living document that will revise it year by year so pitland can be part of this. I believe Indonesian government is picking this up and Peruvian will be soon and Congo when we discuss with the delegates in Bonn last week they are very eager to include NDC in their NDC. And then another mitigation option through REDD is also openly available and it's time now to explore that. And the beautiful thing with NDC with the Paris Agreement is that they also include or even look at adaptation in a balanced manner. So again pitland, wetland will be part of the mitigation but also adaptation. I think that's it. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Please keep your questions for later. I'd like to ask now Babudi Vardana from the pitland agency to speak. He's the deputy head of the national pitland restoration agency. He's director for policy sustainability and transformation and he also worked for a long time, more than 10 years at the ministry of environment where he was the head of division for biosafety and he will so his work is on policy analysis and sustainable transformation and he will talk to us about using LiDAR for pitland restoration planning. Babudi please come up. Thank you, Kristoff. The slide please. So as in the morning, the two technology that PRC requires, one of them is on the technology for pitland mapping. So I will present one of the state of arts in pitland mapping that we use. It's not the newest one available technology that we have currently. So we use LiDAR technology for pitland restoration planning. So I will present you the background of why the government of Indonesia really focusing on and put efforts to restore pitland. One of the reason is the continuous in 18 years without any caps. Every year in 18 years we have forest and land fire in Indonesia and more and more those fires happens of pitland. What is the significant effect of pitland fire is that it can get fire in the long time period because of the amount of biomass that get burned throughout the fire season by seasons. I also would like to give you an introduction on LiDAR and IRL photography technology for our pitland restoration planning. The use of thematic spatial analysis for land cover and hydrotopography data the availability of use spatial thematic data for biophysical restoration planning and the the the summary of the use of this technology for restoration planning. Remote sensing technology if any of you have been in pitland before so you understand the advantage of having this remote sensing technology because we can gather various information type time money, manpower, efficiency accessibility you know how accessible the pitland forest is difficult to go there and to go to the point that we need to check in the pitland. Track changes over time because we use the satellite imagery and then on the same spot of area we can have data from time to time so we can monitor the changes of land cover and with LIDAR and LIDAR we can have 3-dimensional data that we can use to make models and also to put where the constructions of rewetting should be built. The type of sensor that we use we have active and passive one we have type of platform we can use space born platform satellite we have air born small, medium size airplane drone and also hand carried or we carry it through the land and through the pitland for instance the ground penetrating radar that used by C4 also to measure the depth of pitland. So the LIDAR technology stand for the light detection and ranging is the same as radar but using laser beam and we use 3 type of measurement that we have we use inertial measurement unit to ensure that the data that gathered throughout the flying of this airplane to gather data is accurate enough and from large scale mapping for detailed plan we have recording data positions we have points cloud laser data we have assessment and then resulted in digital elevation model and 3D point cloud modeling what is useful so we can look into highly resolution data that we can see the ground sample distance of 10 cm vertical accuracy of 10 cm also and the horizontal accuracy of 7 cm so it's quite accurate and it's quite detailed and the special data produce is aerial photographic the DEM digital elevation model and also thematic and base map at the scale of 1 to 2,500 scale and then cover in 3D point cloud we can see that we have the overview of the areas in terms of forest covers and also the height and also the structures of agitation of the same area and then we applied to the land use of the peat land we can see that the difference between the young, oil palm mature oil palm swampy shrub expand over areas over the peat land and also forest land with good tree cover those three distinct features is the main input that we use for peat land restoration planning the 3D modeling of the same map and then the peat land hydrological unit map that the government already publish based on the scale of 1 to 2,500 scale and also peat land designation map designation map is the designation for the cultivation and for the protections map it should be developed for the scale of 1 to 50,000 1,0 more we need to correct it and then we have hydrological analysis map that we produce in the scale of 1 to 2,500 and then gather the information of the drainage density flow pattern flow directions and also the width and depth of each of the canal and also to generate land cover map with the vegetation density cultivated land natural land and also the types of vegetation over the land it's all produced in one flight of the map the two I could not point it in here but the two map on below is the produce of the LIDAR one of the produce of the LIDAR and using the DEM from the data from the LIDAR we can point out in which directions of the canals that we should block in these examples with the length of this particular canal we have 5.7 kilometers length of this particular canal from the yellow X to the other yellow X and from the two X the height difference is only 50 centimeters in which that's the criteria for putting the canal blocking of the DEMs so the head DEMs will be on that X the first X and then the second X this is also the result of using LIDAR and also using the LIDAR we can see the hydrotopography we can also identify which one is the primary drainage canal which one is the secondary drainage canal in the shape of the DEM and also the natural drainage system or reference system and also we use these maps the seven maps we do the database pit restoration line unit we overlay with the data of forest product timber meaning the concessions of forestry industry and also the concessions of palm oil industries and with the two overlay of those database we can identify which one and who's going to be responsible of particular land UPRG means unit restoration gamut the management unit that responsible for the pitland restoration we can identify each of the unit management what it look like so this is the aerial photography and then we can identify what is the type of land use over the pitland this is also the samples of abandoned pitland this is the burn over areas and then why we need the high resolution data for pitland management planning we need to rezone already allocating pitlands land use for the production and protection purpose we have pitlands water management design that sometimes we need to redesign the water management of the management unit providing three dimensional features detail thematic data for the additional covers land use land management system hydrotopography more for metric of the pitland and topographic of the pitland and then we identify the restorations of degraded pitland through rewetting the vegetation and other socio-economic revitalizations of the local communities this is the surface elevations of Chawang, Air La Lang pit hydrotropical unit you can see in that the water management is important in the plantations on pitland areas to prevent fire and also subsidence of the pitland because the continuous subsidence can lead to another disaster it is not fire but it will be flooding it's the same economic effect that will hit the local community we can use also the result of the LiDAR mapping to measure the carbon stock estimations especially the above ground carbon biomass and also using the multi-stage processing of small to medium scale with the generalization aggregations and then detailing we can move both from the land cover and land use map we can also use the landscape ecological approach to use the to gather the information on land cover according to specific criteria and its criteria have the implications on the management or the restorations actions and this is the matrix that we produce from overlaying and doing the analysis we can see in that matrix the kabu pattern or the districts that the restoration activity should be implemented the unit that is responsible to do the restorations and also the locations in terms of villages so we have also the programs we call the Dhesapoduli Gambut or village friendly pit friendly villages program and also we can identify how many canal blocking that we need to develop to construct in each of this unit management down to or going right to the numbers of revolutions the area that we need to do the revolutions of a degraded pit line and this is the result we can blow this map up to the scale that we can identify how many canal blocking that we need to put and what type of revolutions activities that we need to establish so the red one means that those area has been burned in 2015 and the red one represents the deep pit that already been canalized and the green one is the area of pit dome or depth pit that is still intact so you can see from this hydrological unit of Chawang and Lalang the intact pit line is less than 20% of the whole hydrological so thank you Thank you very much for this interesting and very detailed presentation I'm calling now Lira Meitz for the next presentation Lira is a senior program officer for climate change and biodiversity in the UN environment and as I said before it's actually the UN environment World Conservation Monitoring Center she's working in still supporting countries on special planning for it plus while also considering biodiversity and ecosystem services and she also before joining the WCMC in 2002 she did her PhD in Leeds University on biodiversity in Amazonia Lira, please close your eyes please so despite having done my PhD in Amazonia today I'm talking about the Congo Basin it's a real could we have the slide it's a real honour to be here today with such a prestigious panel thank you very much for having me I've come here from the Global Peatlands initiative meeting so there's been a second partners meeting of the Global Peatlands initiative in Jakarta the last few days and I've also been privileged to be able to visit some of the peatland area in Sumatra so it's really great to hear these additional explanations from BRG on how Indonesia is planning to restore its peatlands but what I wanted to talk about today is a completely different part of the world the Congo Basin could we have the next slide please or can I do that have the power so one of the first things the Global Peatlands initiative is planning to do is a rapid response assessment on the world's peatlands so it'll have the opportunity to build on some of the work from Daniel and his colleagues the intention of the initiatives to build awareness particularly amongst decision makers in peatland countries and indeed in the donor community to help bring the applied of peatlands to the world's attention and the rapid assessment will help to explain some of what we know and some of what we don't know about peatlands and fill some of those well start to identify some of those data gaps until recently in this area in the Congo Basin there's been a very big data gap but there's been a piece of work undertaken by Greta Dargis, Simon Lewis and many colleagues both from the UK and from the Congo Basin the university I'm going to pronounce this wrongly but the University of Marion Ungarbi as well as the Wildlife Conservation Society in the Congo have helped with this work what they've been doing is looking at this area this green blob on the map you can see is a shallow depression about the size of Germany in the central Congo Basin called the Kuwait Central and in this area it was clear that there was peat but there wasn't a great deal of evidence to suggest how much peat there might be so this team went to the area they did some transects so they got an idea of what kinds of vegetation types were on peat and also what the depth of the peat was and the density of the peat in those transects it's quite a small team but they looked at eight transects of between I think two and twenty kilometers it's a good first sample and then they've taken some remote sensing information like Daniel they've been looking at the topography they use radar to get to an idea of standing water and they use optical imagery from this they built a model of the vegetation types so they had an idea of which vegetation types were on peat and they modeled the vegetation types to get to an estimate of the peatland area in the region and they got to around 145,000 kilometers squared so this is a much larger area than people have previously been aware was likely to be covered by peatland and that team would be the first to say this is a first estimate but it's pretty exciting that estimate suggests that the median depth of these peatlands is about two meters and across that area that means there could be as much as 30 gigatons of carbon which is about the same as the amount of biomass in the forest above and below ground across the two countries the Republic of Congo on one side the Democratic Republic of Congo on the other so it's the same story all over the world right the the peatland occupy just a small fraction of the national area but they have a very large proportion of the carbon but of course we already knew that this area was important for other reasons and the center that I come from a particular interest is biodiversity we're a biodiversity conservation and ecosystem services center we then worked with Greta and Simon and colleagues to take the opportunity to do a very rapid first assessment of what else was going on in this region and I'll just show you a couple of maps from that and that's a contribution to the rapid response assessment that I mentioned to start with so clearly this area is important for wildlife for biodiversity what we can see here in green is the areas that are likely to be peat swamp forest emphasising again that this is a first map so these are all the areas that the maximum likelihood model that they used suggested it was more than 50% likely to be peat swamp forest and the darker green areas are those that are richer in threatened vertebrates which is species like the western gorilla over to the west or the bonobo over to the east and then the pink areas the little pink polygons those are key biodiversity areas so the areas that have been identified using a standard that says there are global importance for biodiversity many of these areas have already been designated as protected areas of one kind or another by the two governments so there's clearly an existing commitment to conservation in this region which is encouraging and to date the peatland in this area is in a great condition these forests are relatively intact the peat swamp forest itself is about a day's walk from the river so that's part of the reason why there wasn't very much information about it as it's been relatively remote and inaccessible but that picture may be starting to change and as this map shows in red you can see areas of tree cover loss that's come out of the global Matt Hansen data set and in this particular example you can see the big polygons are showing where there are concessions that are granted or being offered for exploration for oil and gas or the little yellow ones for mining concessions so you can see that there's a possibility that this area will not remain in such an undisturbed state for so long there are also quite a few logging roads that are starting to come into the region and there are around the edges again there are some logging concessions that have been designated so we could be at a turning point for this area and as the delegates from the Congo that have been at the meeting today and at the global peatlands initiative partners meeting have been very keen to stress they'd like to make sure that these peatlands are protected in the future and they don't experience some of the problems that have been seen in Southeast Asia with drainage and burning so what can researchers do to support this grand objective of keeping those peat carbon stocks intact one obvious step is to refine the carbon stock estimates so the only transects that have been produced so far have been done by this team and they've just been done in a limited part of this huge basin so there's an opportunity to use the vegetation map to quite selectively sample other areas and then to improve the map based on those samples to get a better idea of how accurate the map is but I don't think we need to wait for a perfect map to be able to start thinking about what the future threats might be to this region and what the policy responses should be so we can produce some scenarios that look at that kind of the concession stated that I was showing later but also what the likely changes are in commodity demand food demand and so on in the region to see have a better idea of the risk of agricultural conversion because people really aren't very clear about this so far and then also it will be very helpful to know in this region if there was drainage what would the effects of that drainage on ecosystem services be we have a lot of lessons from Asia Pacific but it is a different part of the world and there is very little knowledge on what drainage might do to the fire risk in this region what role the Peatlands play in the regional hydrology and how that might be affected what it might do to water quality and so on and then of course the people working at every level from the local communities up to the governments need to think about how they are going to manage this area and future so there is room for some action research on what the communities are thinking how they are using the Peatlands very far what their aspirations are for their own future development and then to get to supporting the national government, the local governments in thinking about what sound policy options are so that this area can be protected and that any use is sustainable so I think there is a strong role for the international community to play in supporting the Congos the two governments are really just beginning to have an idea of the massive carbon stocks that they are responsible for here they already knew that they had 30 gigatons in their forest but now another 30 gigatons of carbon it's a pretty big deal thank you thanks Lira for this very interesting glimpse into what's happening in the Congo basin our next speaker is Professor Mitsuro Ozaki from Hokkaido University as I said before Professor Emeritus of the research faculty and he's a professor of the Graduate School of Agriculture or he was he's a well known globally leading scientist on Peatlands and wetlands he works also on scarce emissions, on fires, on rehabilitation and conservation of Peatlands he was for several years the project leader of the IKA project on wildfire and carbon management in pitfalls in Indonesia and this work resulted also in the first book of Peatlands which was published last year he's also president of the Japan Peatlands Society and he has several collaborations with other universities and with organizations in Indonesia so we'll be talking to us about peatland restoration to enhance carbon neutral function Professor Ozaki please come to the microphone so the title is a little bit different so you can see this is a quite new terminology ABCDEF securities enhancement by the tropical peatland restoration so you see the security is something opposite concept of the crisis this is the security and the crisis is something front or back and so I want to talk the peatland from the another aspect so if we want to reserve or destrate the completely peatland which enhance the securities so this ABCDEF is several securities could you give the next one yes what is the ABCDEF securities so as you know the natural capital in peatland which is very high because of and also the high water the reserve ecosystem and so later I am talking about biomass productivity is also very high compared to the mineral soil and so the biodiversity also very high so if the natural peatland to maintain or rehabilitate we can get this kind of high value of the natural capital and so this is the ABCDEF securities and if the we overcome the crisis because of the crisis mainly depend on the developing of the canals and the water level is decreasing so this is one of the crisis and so which is very affected by the climate change and so but if to rehabilitate to recover this kind of the drained ecosystems so we can get a very high value of the ABCDEF securities what is the A is the aquatic this is the water the you know the this is a very high the water reserve ecosystem so water security is increasing and the biodiversity is very high and the climate change the security also increasing because this is the the contribute to mitigation as a carbon emission deduction and adaptation as a high the biomass production even in the high the water level conditions which is against the El Nino effect and also the disaster securities so what is the disaster that is the main is the fire and the haze and so energy securities if the good management so we can get a huge amount of the biomass from the petron and so food feed security so for example if the we are growing the so this is a very adapted the petron and so give the huge amount of the starch and so this is will be the contribute to food security or feed securities so if roughly calculate so if compared to the starch production of the rice so this value is almost 20 times or 10 times higher than the rice and so the social securities okay so if we success this ABCDF so this security contributed to the social or national the securities so next one please and so for thinking the security or crisis this is reported from the world economic the forums and so this the forum point out what is the global the crisis in just 21st century so the you see the the bottom is livelihood to go to the right so just the livelihood crisis increasing and so this background the impact to the climate and so the natures and so on so this security the crisis also increasing and so what is the most highest the crisis from this use to criteria so circle that circle showing that is a water crisis especially the the land the waters the amount of water and the quality of the water so now the 21st century so we must thinking that we are caring about not only the carbon also water is very important as already I said the peteran is both the element very high the stock so that we we should to estimate the carbon function or water function so next one so why this kind of the the crisis one is for example the victory of all in the Zambia river so this is very famous the falls so 2012 so we visit IPCC committees visited here and take pictures and the border of the Zimbabwe and the Zambia and so the 2015 maybe you know the Super El Ninos and so you see no waters and very surprised it is the big the falls almost two kilometers but dry up and so I asked to the the person of the who manage the park here and so never happened even in the 1997 to also we have the Super El Ninos but waterfall still remain in us of the waters which mean maybe so climate condition almost same in the both years and so we are very worried about the water stock now so the getting degrees in this ecosystem in Africa and next one Kinnabar mountain highest mountain and you can see the the cloud surrounding the mountains so just the cloud give something moisture to ecosystem then so you see next one next one so we can found the peat in just the cloud forest from the 1200 to 100 500 height in this area so all days almost cloud very humid and we can find the spawn grass and we can find the peat in the slope here is around 30 centimeter to 50 centimeter sometimes one meter so huge the peat is located in this cloud forestry in Borneo and so but I visited to 2015 in Super El Nino years just the normally very wet huge the waters contained but the dryer completely and so you can see the bottom normally they have the big waterfalls this is another year pictures and so just time there are no waters completely not only the African case also the park the management people said this is the first time completely dry up the fall and so even in the 1997 to 8 similar El Ninos but still enough amount of water supplied because of huge stock of the waters in the cloud forest areas but now so getting the dry more years maybe so the water is kind of short or dry up so next one so this is something more bigger scale the water and carbon relationship or circulation and in the bottom you see the already we are discussing the low land and huge amount of water stock and carbon stock and so then so water evaporate or transfer it and make a cloud and circulate it inside or sometimes bring the water to the mountain the side and so the center we call the heart of Borneo still remain the forestry but just the year by year the forestry and if the the disappear the forestry maybe the water stock is decreasing and so which mean if have the rain in the rainy season and so water may be down off and dry season no stock and dry up the rivers and so this kind of the big the circulated ecosystem we are very worried about destroyed by something the human development of the pit low land pit also high land pit and so if the the pit run by for example the drain and so just increasing the vulnerabilities and this is the case of the what to say the if you want to manage the pit run in dry the pit run the systems so which is the vulnerability is increasing and the resilience is decreasing but if we change the system and rewetting the keep high water levels and so vulnerability is decreasing and the resilience is increasing so maybe this is what to say very drastically we cannot select between of this so we decide which is better the management this kind of the total ecosystem next one so maybe so this is the general the pictures of what is function of the pit run so key is the water and so if the the pit run deforested and so something impact climate change and the the drain so that is directly to affect the water statutes and so if change the water statutes and maybe which mean reducing the water condition or amount of the water so which affect the carbon emission by 5 years and also the carbon emission the microorganic degradation and also the carbon loss through the waters and so we also found this is also affect to the carbon assimilation this is a photosynthesis and so this also decreasing by reduce of water levels next one so the normally we are thinking the the plant in pit run will be the small but from our actually the study in the Calimantan and so the that one is mixed this and the green one is the pit run and the gray one is the very shallow pit the sandy soils and so the above man above ground biomass is very high in the mineral soils maybe this is the normally you agree but productivity how much the produce the biomass per year per hectare so if we started this values and so the mineral soil MDF mixed the forestry forestry is low and if compared to this so the root product rate is very high almost two or three times higher than the mineral soil in the pit run and so the productivity is very high if keeps the high water tables which is growing the natural vegetation better adapted to high water tables and that trees or ecosystem give two or three times higher the productivity and so next one so the another is the sago so the sago is this is ideal case in the melanti and so the very high the starch production that is around 30 tone per hectare per year and the sago sago produced around 100 tone the biomass that is the dry matter per hectare per year this is something the record of the biomass production in the global scales next one so in the past we are only thinking farmers or small the private company to produce the starch from the sago in wet run and so yes this is also very important and so this start contribute food and feed and so but you see the sago the palm give the very high biomass also and so this was a slower way and nothing sometimes polluted to environment and so but if use the biomass to as a fuel so which give the high value of the what to say I said the securities and also something biomaterials and you see the sago more adapted to close to the coastal areas coastal or mangrove areas also in this ecosystem the nipple and the coconut and something the mick forestry the timbers we also produce a huge amount of biomass and so we design together with what is the benefit to incentive to conserve or destrate of this the wet the peat run the economic values potential economic value very huge but nothing touch about this kind of the materials for until now so now we think the including this kind of the values for peat restoration the concept next one so this is the conclusion so the the left side maybe you see the harvested the sound I call so what is the harvest sound already the fix the carbon by the plants then the stock as the fossil fuel why the oil and the coals and something gas and so but you know the COP21 agreement we must reduce drastically to use this kind of the fossil fuels and so another point the in all time the stock the carbon in wetland and something coastal ecosystems and so this is our topics to how to conserve these areas so which we call as mitigations so that is almost equal to the conservation and that contribute to mitigate the climate change and so but just the the international agreement the COP21 and SDGs another criteria to conserve the ecosystem SDGs sustainable development goals and we have the 16 goals and more detail the goal is the huge but mostly related something environment or ecological system how to estimate SDGs this is another topic in futures but anyways so the introducing this kind of the criteria now so the already the we discussing let the press and so we can use this mechanism for the credit carbon credit and so you know the Indonesia is leading countries for talking about this kind of the debt to press but so the international government to to register it around the 40 debt to project but among the 40s only to now come to the biodiversity reservoir concession which is more as a debt to project and so one is the Dima and the second one is the Dima and very large the areas the covering but you see the the debt program not officially started in Indonesia and they cover something the CSR something another and so the still the many problem of the debt and also the carbon credit the value is very low the international market and so just the credit mechanism is not so the good incentive to to promote the the pit restoration but this is still very important but we I recommend to more focusing the harvesting sound now we what we do to harvest the sound so maybe so which is related to the the wind, water, solar power and so on and another one is the biomass and so I said especially the give very high biomass even compared to the mineral soil and so then this is something adaptation program to climate change and so we this is some examples the sago, nipon coconut and something trees and we get food feed and energy and also something materials and so now you see the CSR only the Essex but now so the after SDGs the agreement so the investors especially bank are now moving to ESG and SRI environment social governance and so socially responsible investment this is SRI so what is this is not only the criteria okay so the bank or international network of the bank to applying this criteria and estimate some company for example destroying the pit run and so they calculated for example the SDGs the marks and if give very low the values no investor and maybe the company is corrupt so this is very strong the powerful the tools and we should do more focusing on the mechanism not only the carbon and so the binding together the investment and not only the credit maybe so ask to the investment to the biomass then so what to say the what to say the economic the incentives the increasing for local people and for the Indonesia government and so next one thank you very much okay thank you very much last speaker is Serena Liu from the global environment center she is a senior staff where she is working on petland related issues petland management supporting institutional development and capacity frameworks also in collaboration with ASEAN and so she will talk to us about community development what is the best petland restoration experience from 10 years good afternoon everyone so after long discussion by our expert scientists click here so now is a community based practice so we actually how to transform the information from this technical findings and recommendation to government to really practice on the ground together with the community looking at partnership so is the one of the sustainable development goal to have these partnerships for the goals is actually to share knowledge share expertise technology and most important thing to share the finance to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries in particular developing countries so we actually engage with other civil society partners to build experience and resource strategies of the partnership so multi stakeholders partnership with multi funded projects and programs we have the ASEAN in the middle because that's the ownership of the program then we have international development agencies which provide financial support technical support so we also have local community partners as well and not the least the CSR partners so we have we have and other partners and funders so this all the documented best management practices in ASEAN region for the past 10 years so we transform technology to practice which to engage also the community so we get the community to participate so we give them training workshops to strengthen the capacity one of the most important thing is the fire happening on pitlands so the technical partner they come up with the forecast and how we disseminate this information to the community so we develop the smart phone application so we get the land manager to subscribe to the application as well and then automatically to the subscriber then engage them to participate to prepare their village map with utilization of GPS so we have the technology in GPS but usually GPS only used by the expert or maybe our NGO colleague but we really need to engage the local scientists because they're living there, they know their place and it's their livelihood then for that dissemination of information also community have their own system their community radio system so if they don't have internet coverage but at least they have their community radio the lesson learn and experience sharing through environmental education training and workshops to improve their skills we also have this peer learning program to bring communities from one location to another location to learn from each other farming practices sojourn farming which is agri-frocery practices in the great planting of cash crop and medium term three species this can be cash crop together with the rubber, geluto floating garden this is the concept was developed in Philippines because they usually have their flood every year so they have this flood garden concept for the rehabilitation practices water management and fire prevention bang a living three system by Park Suido from Central Kalimantan then have a seedling buyback program the seedling nursery developed by local communities and seedling to be self to the government agency or NGO to do their replanting at the degraded pitlands then canal blocking and control so this is a local community engaged to support patrolling and also to train them with the prevention measures and fire suppression and control this is really happening in Indonesia because Indonesia they have a program for alternative livelihood development green contract very famous in Vietnam this is actually to engage the population within the buffer zone to take care of the buffer zone to protect the national park then development of environmental friendly energy so integrate approach where cattle implantation with threaded palm leaves then the canal manual turn into biogas which support the household usage in kitchen or the lights in the house ecotourism create awareness while providing income opportunity for local communities with limited damage to the ecosystem then research and development research for compost or burn organic waste to create ash for fertilizer in the cropping and other innovative to encourage the use of a plant so that they don't do the burning on the plant itself so key factor for successful engagement so the first engage them from early stage so they involve in the planning until they practice and do the maintenance so also to support community organization development generate clear benefit to community so it must be clear, it's not unclear so maybe they have some blind promise something like that but this one is really have to when you say something, you promise them to do it, you really have to fulfill that then awareness enhancement and capacity building, seedling, development, planting maintenance and fire prevention so we have plated hydrology and encourage power of nature to support natural regeneration so Umington National Park in Vietnam this is very successful story where Maluloka forest on Pitland recognized as Asian Heritage Park in 2013 then designated as Ramsasai in 2016 so it's actually the commitment from the local authorities and technical support from scientists and research institute as well as the local committee at buffer zone where improved livelihood reducing dependency on the forest so this is a multi stakeholder effort multi level development effort so on this best management practices actually come under this asian pitland management strategy 26 to 2020 also under the umbrella of asian agreement on trans poly which was signed in 2002 then after that there is asian program on sustainable management of pitland ecosystem 2014 to 2020 by the asian environment ministers in 2013 so under the asian pitland program of sustainable management of pitland ecosystem there were six key targets were endorsed the first one the pitland inventory second zero burning and control burning with exceptional cases the third replacement for sustainable management sustainable livelihood sustainable economic use fifth reduction of greenhouse gases emission and the sixth implementation of asian pitland management strategy and national action plan on pitlands so this is very significant milestone for asian in conserving the pitland ecosystem in the region so from asian agreement on trans poly then asian pitland management initiative in 2003 then asian management strategy in 2006 then asian national action plan on pitlands so objective of future projects and program must be in line with the priorities of the asian natural community blueprint the intensifying implementation of the strategies national action plans and also the asian program support implementation of the asian asian haste free roadmap this is new the haste free roadmap and those a year ago then upcoming projects there are four global projects in Indonesia, Malaysia and Mekong and one EU funded asian cooperation in biodiversity and climate change program with the title use of pitland and haste mitigation in asian then the Japan asian integration fund then we have international fund for agricultural development on measurable action for haste free southeast asia these projects are to achieve sustainable management of pitland through collective actions and enhance cooperation to support and sustain local livelihoods reduce fire risk and associated haste and contribute to global environmental management for a clean and green asian and there's a saying cherish the earth starts from each individual's footsteps each individual's own responsibility to take care of the mother earth the pitland ecosystem with that, thank you thank you very much Serina how do we bring all this together first of all I'm going to say we're going to go five minutes it's not enough to really get a discussion going but at least I would like to allow that recently I read something about the CK concept it's another letter we add to the soup it seems to be a concept that comes from the industry and seems to play a role in some parts of the industry to organize their thinking it's about C concept and K knowledge and how we bring the two together and I think in this session maybe that's how we can frame what we have seen in this session how knowledge is needed which we saw in the first presentations new knowledge about pitlands they extend the carbon stored there but also the knowledge doesn't tell you much if you don't have a concept how you deal with it and I think the second part of the presentations gave us a little bit more insight into conceptual thinking thinking out of the box thinking communities in working with communities learning from them too and also thinking in broader ways than just single crop systems but trying to develop a more integrated approach to management and I also think we always have a tendency to go into one direction let's say red is going to solve everything or this red is going to solve everything and I think we need to think of those systems in broader terms in more integrated terms and also in more diverse terms and I guess this is maybe the take home message today that if we have the concepts alone without data we don't get far but we need data we need the data for the better management of pitlands we need also to better understand where pitlands are and how deep they are and how much carbon is there to think about how we handle all this and I think that came out of the second part I'd like to open the floor for a few questions and then I give a very quick final round for one sentence comments to the panel and so stay with us for another five minutes who has questions please come forward or comments nobody everything is crystal clear you know what to do now when you go out here how are you going to save pitlands from now on ok then maybe let's go to the panel again and maybe start from professor Ozaki and then go this way and just one sentence what is your priority for the next steps what would be the next thing that needs to be done I think we need a microphone one sentence they are eager to get coffee so the next step I showed the two mechanisms for incentive one is the credit mechanism but established the credit so the huge task work so we want to reduce this kind of task work using something in a model what to say we develop the satellite data and actually the monitoring and the binding so more easy to estimate water tables and see what emission something like so simplify this maybe so more easy to apply to REDD or some other credit mechanism and another point so we are still missing the something technology how to use the biomass so the lot of the project already gone to Europe and Japan but not adequate technology here the small community several the level is required not yet so developing and so the additional the comment is should be to to develop more the water management systems so canal blocking is one ideas but already the drain and the dried areas if make a canal no water is coming up so the irrigation is important and the the mention about in the case of the veteran the Umington National Park so this totally bound the pit run in 1997 to eight by big El Ninos then so the government decide to protect and make a big they shut down the canals and make what they say pumping up systems now so the keep don't elaborate so credits better biomass management and water management so thinking about the Congo basin region of course it's good to have better information and for any kind of land use or spatial planning you need to know where the pit is I don't think it's quite so important although it's interesting and valuable to know exactly how deep it is because once that people and starts to degrade whether it's two meters or five meters you'll still be getting significant so I think from a research quantification perspective pinning down the area is the first priority but I also don't think you need to wait for that better information to be starting to work on the policy and to be identifying how the development needs of that area can be met in a way that still protects that valuable ecosystem and all of its services not just the garden stocks okay two pronged approach that's why I'm already working on the policies I think makes a lot of sense Lira I would say welcome on board on the P Land families and just do our best use our capacity and also to teach our friends or whoever to really conserve and protect the P Land ecosystem in the world did I say Lira sorry Serina okay club so from our part to make a better planning we have to understand what is to be planned in there and it's still too expensive for us using the luxurious technology as slider to do P Land management so we need to find another way that we can gather or we can have good enough data without having to pay for that data so much so technology for that second part is those luxurious data is idle if we don't use it properly so please access those data and use it for research for other purpose even for measuring the carbon from these excellent data that we have so it's open so let's use that for the betterment of the P Land management I see everybody already on the cell phones accessing the data okay Daniel I like that C and K concept, having had the map it's yours, it's not ours it's open for public conceptually speaking it is usable to enter into this interaction with the NDC processes so that's the next very destination we are heading to how to locate this precious asset in terms of high carbon ecosystem use the map and refine that and we need knowledge with this knowledge we can refine what we already have there so it will be really applicable so it will be very convincing to government to local community and also so yeah with the C and K thing we can move forward with the map and if you make the next step and then turn right you will see the landscape and visit our map thank you thank you okay C and K use knowledge smartly develop better concepts to use knowledge and work one step further in bringing all this into country country climate action embedded incorporated in the NDCs I think that's also a very important thing we need to work on okay thank you very much everybody let's give a round of hands to the panel and thanks for being here


The forest industry is a industry that does need skilled workers. It's a high-tech industry. We do need to attract foresters. We need to attract all kinds of people who can work in mills, people who can work in the bioenergy area, the bio-economy sector, producing new products such as nanocrystalline cellulose. So our pulp mills, for example, have positions for highly skilled workers. So the government has up the ante in skills training with the new message and skills training in the schools, universities, the technical colleges and the industry doing its business, its bit. I think we can attract some workers into the industry where otherwise people who want to stay in resource communities would have to move.


Next presentation is going to be given by Jakom Brisco. It's going to tell us about the exporters, battery fund, and tax compliance. Jakom is assistant professor at the University of... Sorry, at the University of Tobingen in Germany. He has an extensive experience working with the public finance and taxation. He's one of the researchers who are giving a lot of information, research findings with acetide data. You are welcome. Presenting this project, so this is a project about VAT refunds. Title is a working title expected to be changing at some point. But this is a project with Marlise who's at UNU wider in South Africa and with Teju who is at UC Irvine. So, let's start by making sure we're all on the same page and we'll know what is a VAT refund. So, VAT refund arises whenever a firm has a lower liability on its output than it has input tax credits and thus is an owed net money from the government. There are a few ways that can happen, one of which is being VAT a destination based tax. Firms face zero percent tax rate on whatever they export but they're still in the VAT system meaning that they get to claim input tax credits and so they sort of naturally would have, especially if they export a lot, they would naturally have negative VAT liabilities. Same goes for a lot of countries have goods that are zero rated even when they're sold domestically in which case the story is very similar and finally you might have years or tax periods in which you have particularly high expenses say because of a big lump investment in which case that can also result in a situation where your input tax credits exceed the liability on your output. Sort of you can think of this as immediate expensive in a corporate income tax system. All of this to say you really really really cannot have a VAT system without having refunds in some way to administer refunds. So this becomes a very relevant aspect of VAT because you might think okay so we have refunds we issue refunds the end except if you just issue refunds that can result in some very massive evasion and here you know sort of the one way to think about this is that usually the amount you can evade on a tax is capped at the amount of tax you owe right whereas we're three funds you know the more input tax credit you claim fraudulent input tax credit you claim the more you can evade without any sort of natural cap. You know Madara Wasim has a paper showing this is happening in Pakistan. I was talking to Wainona who was helpfully providing some anecdotal evidence that it is happening in South Africa but it is happening in sort of richer countries as well. There have been cases of carousel fraud in the EU. You know if you want to spend a fun half an hour I suggest you Google Australia TikTok VAT refunds. I assure you that is going to be entertaining and yet TikTok is in the video platform where you know people upload dance videos or whatever. But so yeah VAT refund fraud is a thing so there are good reasons why you might want to pay special attention to firms that are claiming refunds on the other end you know if you never pay out these refunds right and you just hold on to them forever and ever and you just infinitely scrutinize these firms then you're really giving up a bunch of efficiency aspects of VAT that usually make it favorable to or at least in theory on the textbook make it favorable to other consumption tax systems like say sales taxes or turnover taxes. So that's sort of what we're and then South Africa you know is a particularly interesting institutional setting but let me not sort of linger on that because the point of this study is to sort of look at this end of the spectrum right and ask okay so clearly there are good reasons why revenue agencies are going to want to you know not go too fast with these refunds but what happens when firms experience delays to the behavior of these firms going forward and you know you might be thinking so okay there are clearly reasons why you might expect behavioral impacts of this sort of treatment of VAT refunds by revenue agencies and where are those concentrated and you know one thing we can show you is that the value of refunds is very much concentrated among zero rated sellers right those are the sellers that usually ask for the biggest refunds and indeed if we look at this graph about you know almost 90% of refund claims in value are claimed by sellers of zero rated goods either domestically or abroad but these refund claimers do not make up even half of all refund claimers which might you know might be telling in that you might actually think that the behavioral response is in fact not concentrated among among sellers of zero rated goods but rather other firms that are claiming refunds for other reasons like say lumpy investment and indeed we can see this we can confirm this when we're looking at sort of bunching graphs or just plotting histograms of VAT liability and here we're scaling by output but we can and you know scaling by output because exporter send to be a lot bigger than other firms in the economy but you know we can show you the same graphs and they're not going to make tell a very different story if we're not scaling them we can see that there's quite strong bunching at zero and this is sort of a fairly established fact in the VAT literature that firms would rather not claim a refund just to sort of forgo the headache of increased audit probability etc this does not show up when we're looking at firms that you would expect to be claiming a refund right so if we look at exporters on the left or zero rated domestic sellers on the right we don't see nearly as much bunching as we see in the graph for the total population which is by the way even stronger if we look at only non-zero rated sellers why is there bunching? well like we said you know there are good reasons to expect that there is bunching and here we can show so we have this sort of we actually just today got access to the audit data so you know expect more on this but in the VAT data as we have it right now we have this assessment variable which is sort of a very broad term as we understand goes from SARS followed up with the firm again for because there was a typo in the tax return to there was a very intensive audit but what we can show is that there is some probability of assessment depending on what bin of VAT liability you fall in and that there is strong discontinuities at zero I'm going to come back to this post pre-October 2018 thing at the end here but here I just want to show you there's clear big jumps in the probability that you are assessed if you claim a refund then if you don't of course there's selection here going on it's not random who falls on which side of zero but given the bunching graphs you might all the more expect that the same firm would expect higher audit probability if it crosses the zero threshold so we're currently working on a cleaner causal indication but what we have today to show you is sort of mostly motivational evidence mostly correlational evidence so what we do here is we simply say okay let's say let's create a dummy variable zero before you experience the delay and it's one thereafter so it becomes one if you are ever in the top quartile of waiting times in any given year and then look at what happens to some outcomes so what we can show and then we can control for year fixed effects firm fixed effects we can control for other sort of year variant controls but what we can show is basically after you waited a long time for a refund you are less likely to claim refunds in the future you tend to invest less relative to your total output and you tend to have pay more VAT or at least claim less refunds so we find this very interesting motivational evidence for this one thing you might say is well gee but of course it is endogenous who it is that experiences refunds and there might be selection in this sample what we can show you to reassure you of that is we can play the same game conceptually it's like a parallel trends check we can play this game in reverse we can say okay well if it's just selection what if instead of looking backwards meaning whether you ever experience a refund I construct a variable saying whether you will ever experience a refund in the future and what we can show is all the signs flip relative to the preview stable why well because the mechanical effect here goes in the exact opposite direction if you claim more refunds it's more likely that you're eventually going to experience a delay if you claim more refunds it's more likely you're investing a whole lot etc so now let's get to sort of what we're thinking of using for causal implications so we found that in October 2018 there was a leadership change in South Africa in SARS that led to significant reductions in waiting times for refunds in particular for waiting times in general you can see but for refunds in particular and we are thinking of a nice identification strategy that can exploit that variation as exogenous to firm decisions and I already showed you the probability of assessment here the discontinuity probability of assessment dramatically changed between pre and post October 2018 I can show you here the waiting times and this is in days by the way on the vertical axis dramatically dropped post October 2018 what we don't see is big behavioral responses in terms of claiming refunds by firms that are claiming refunds for the first time so what we're arguing is there's not huge selection who is claiming a refund for the first time firms are just particularly inexperienced refund claimers are sort of going into it thinking well it turns out I have a refund let me ask for a refund but the waiting times dramatically drop almost by two thirds here and still some back and forth with SARS that is going on about exactly what we're measuring here in terms of waiting times but there's clearly something going on right before October 2018 we see average waiting times exceeding a month and after we see them at least halving relative to that standard so this is what we're planning to do we're sort of thinking of doing diff and diff pre post first refund request and we're treated as first refund request happening after October 2018 and control group is first refund request happening before 2018 which is going to allow us to check for parallel trends of course that all still needs to happen but we're very much looking forward to that and to any of your comments so what we saw here is that the value of refunds is dominated by zero rated sellers but the behavioral effects of refunds might be concentrated among in whole other parts of the economy that we see strong bunching among non zero rated sellers but not among zero rated sellers which again confirms that hypothesis and we can show some early evidence suggesting that waiting a long time for a refund decreases investments and decreases the likelihood of claiming a refund and increases your net liability going forward and like I said future work is going to focus on a more causally well causally identified strategy so thank you very much


If you want to improve your soccer skills right now, this video is for you. Dylan Tooby, Progressive Soccer, I'm about to show you five simple but very effective soccer skills tutorials that will actually make you play better in your next match. If you don't know about me, I used to be a huge underachiever, but through obsessive self-improvement, I found my success. Earned a college scholarship, played for my national football team, a YouTube channel with over 100 million views, I've helped players worldwide and I'd love to help you improve faster and achieve more. I'm gonna take a look at dribbling, ball control, passing, shooting, and even some tricks. But before we get into it, make sure you're subscribed. Please remember to like and share. When it comes to dribbling, the most important thing for me is being direct. Have purpose. Do something when the ball is at your feet. Don't be hesitant. Don't be slow. Try to drive towards net. Take up that open space with purpose. On the other side of things, you don't want to over complicate your play and take too many touches when it's not necessary. Some of you are going to look at this clip and say, I want to dribble like that. Yes, you need to have skills. You need to be creative when the ball is at your feet, but you have to do something with the ball. Don't be a Neymar wannabe trying to faint and beat a guy six different times when all you have to do was beat him once. Be direct with your dribbling. If the space is there, take it without hesitation. Want to be an effective dribbler, you have to develop the ability to go both directions. I'm always going to encourage you to work on both feet. Have two strong feet. But if you favor one foot more than the other, you still have to be able to go both right and left. Otherwise, you become very easy to defend and very predictable. The best dribblers dribble with a low center of gravity. They get low to the ground. Their touches are sharp. They change direction quickly. Most players, when they're on the ball, they're too upright. There's no bending their knees. They don't get low to the ground. They can't protect the ball. They can't shield the ball. Obviously, this is very overemphasized, but this is how most players turn and dribble. When you're dribbling, I want you to focus on the quality of your body movement as much as the quality of your touches. So, bend your knees. Be explosive with your turns. Protect the ball with your body. So, my simple but effective advice for better dribbling, number one, be direct with your dribbling. Eliminate hesitation and do not overcomplicate your play. Number two, develop the ability to dribble in both directions. Obviously, if you can be a two-footed player, you're going to be more effective, but make sure you're able to go both right and left with confidence. And number three, focus on having a lower center of gravity. Bend your knees when you turn. Make quick, sharp cuts and explode in the opposite direction. My first tip for better ball control is what I call making visual contact with the ball. Now, this may seem silly, but most players, when they're about to control or have a first touch, don't actually watch the ball all the way to their foot. So, whenever possible, watch that ball all the way to your foot to ensure that you make better contact and have a better first touch. It's also really important that whenever possible, you move quickly to get behind or underneath the ball as opposed to lunging for your ball. This applies to receiving passes and balls in the air. Instead of lunging, putting out your foot, quickly move your body as quickly as you can to get behind the ball or underneath it. Even if you have a poor touch, you'll be on top of the ball and you'll be able to react quickly. So, instead of lunging for passes or lunging to control balls out of the air, quickly move your feet, get there and focus on a good first touch. Please understand, your current skill level is the direct result of the amount and quality of practice that you have put in. So, if you want to improve your skills, you want to improve your ball control, juggle every single day. If you can't hit 500 consecutive juggles, I would encourage you to juggle every day until it becomes a reality. Once you become comfortable with that, start working on other ball control techniques, becoming comfortable with all different parts of your feet and body. So, to recap my advice for better ball control, number one, focus on actually making visual eye contact with the ball to your foot. Number two, instead of lunging for passes or lunging to control the ball out of the air, quickly move your feet to get there and focus on the quality of your first touch.  If you cannot hit 500 consecutive juggles right now, that is your current ball control goal. If you like this content, check out the Soccer Success Planner. You can download it for free. There's a link in the description below. And for advanced training, check out the online Soccer Academy. Whether it's 50 or 5 yards, I want you to focus on the quality of every single pass. Most people are lazy and careless when it comes to their passing. I want you to overemphasize your passing technique, get your body over the ball, make strong foot contact, follow through to your target. Next, I want you to think about shaping your passes. It's okay to play a straight pass, but if you're always playing across your body and you're unable to curl the ball away from the defender, you're more likely to get your passes intercepted. So, think about where is the defender? How can I curl it away from him? And also, how can I curl the ball into the path of my teammate to make it easier for him to control? Just like any other skill, it's very important that you're confident passing the ball with both feet. If I know you only have a right foot, you become very easy to defend. Even if you favor one foot more than the other, make sure you can play a confident pass with your weaker foot. Advice for better passing. Number one, overemphasize your technique and take pride in the quality of every single pass. Never give the ball away due to a careless or lazy pass. Number two, shape your passes away from defenders and into the path of your teammate. And number three, develop the ability to pass effectively with both feet so you're unpredictable and hard to defend. When it comes to shooting, the most important thing I want you to start with is actually having the desire to get your shots off. So many players getting good situations and they hesitate or end up passing to a teammate because they're afraid to miss. Whenever you have the opportunity, drive with purpose and get your shot off even if it isn't the best. The biggest mistake players make when shooting is trying to hit the ball with too much power. It usually ends up in losing control of their body or making poor contact with the ball. Instead of focusing on power, focus on good technique.  You'll be surprised at how good your shots are when you start to focus on technique rather than power. And in many situations, it's probably better for you to get your head up and place the ball. Don't rush your shots. If you have time, pick a corner, put it there with pace, but pass it into the corner rather than trying to blast the ball as hard as you can. When most players have the opportunity to score, they're actually thinking about missing rather than shooting technique. Now, this seems crazy, but think about a time when you had a great goal scoring opportunity. Were you thinking about your shooting technique or instead, were you thinking about missing the target, the opponent tackling you, your teammates and coach getting upset when it's time to score, focus on what you can control and that is your shooting technique. Put all the missed shots out of your mind, visualize the goal. Recapping advice for better shooting. Number one, actually have the desire to shoot whenever possible and don't pass up scoring opportunities. Number two, prioritize technique over power and whenever possible, instead of blasting as hard as you can, actually place your shots. Number three, when it's time to score, focus on scoring, not missing. Visualize yourself putting the ball in the net, focus on good shooting technique. If you want to learn some freestyle tricks to impress your friends and show off a little, that's cool. It will help you improve your ball control, but do not tell yourself that this is actually making you a better player. It isn't helping you get closer to your goals. So number one, you have to focus on real match skills that are actually going to help you perform better in games and allow you to help your team win more matches. Tricks are fun. I went through a phase when I was younger of mastering skills, but in my opinion, the best trick is putting the ball in the back of the net. If you like this content, check out the soccer success planner. You can download it for free. There's a link in the description below and for advanced training, check out the online soccer academy.


Art in the Park in Bemidji is turning 50 years old. The art fair features talent for more than 100 artists. Haiti Clotter shows us how they're preparing to make this year's fair a state of the art celebration. Library Park in Bemidji will turn into an art gallery for the 50th anniversary of Art in the Park. The annual fair allows local and regional artists to share their work. It has been a longstanding tradition in the community and not only do residents enjoy it, but we have a lot of people that come to the area specifically for it. So that's what has helped keep it strong and had it happen for 50 years. An average of 4,000 visitors will come to the fair and you'll find anything from ceramics to fiber artists. Some artists will even show how they create their pieces of art with live demonstrations. It's just a huge mix. And you're gonna find some unusual things here, some wood carving and some other people take materials and do some different stuff with it. So you're gonna find jewelry, glass, there's a soap maker. Doris Polson of Wisconsin is at her 12th show and loves being in Bemidji. She keeps people interested by offering unique pieces that can be found in stores. Her theme this year is outdoors with items such as birdhouses, pictures, and garden chairs. Just a wonderful, wonderful crowd. Every year, they, people, lots of, lots of customers. So I guess that's what we're looking for.  So I guess that keeps us coming back. Nearly 100 artists are setting up their space for the two-day arts and craft fair that'll also have something new this year with the Waterfront Concert. We just thought it would be fun to be able to do a community concert and serve some anniversary cake. So hopefully people can come down for that on Saturday night. Hometown artists like Bemidji State University alum, John Carlson, grew up around art in the park. He used to come here when he was younger and now has come full circle, being a part of it for the last five years, displaying his pottery. There's everything that's here, you know.  The fair runs from 10 to five on Saturday and 10 to four on Sunday in Bemidji, Haiti, Clowter, Lakeland News. The fair is put on by the Watermark Arts Center and Paul Bunyan Communications and will also feature food vendors and a family activity tent. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.


Today, we commemorate International Albinism Awareness Day, a day chosen by the General Assembly five years ago to celebrate people with albinism around the world. It is also a day to stand in solidarity with people with albinism in their successes as well as their challenges. In this unprecedented time with the COVID-19 pandemic, people with albinism are more vulnerable to human rights violations. There are reports of persons with albinism being branded Corona and COVID-19 in some countries, effectively labelling them as scapegoats of the pandemic and further ostracising them in their communities.  This is due to harmful superstitions and false beliefs that their body parts can bring good luck. Women and children often bear the brunt of those atrocities. I urge governments to be vigilant against these violations and to ensure strong protection measures for people with albinism. Failure to destigmatize albinism, address racial discrimination and accommodate visual impairment combined with bullying and risk of attacks often results in a large number of students with albinism dropping out of school. This in turn leads to unemployment and a life of poverty. I call on all relevant governments to ensure that the human rights of people with albinism are included in the measures and decisions aimed at eliminating socio-economic disparities, particularly during the pandemic. I also urge the authorities to ensure that people with albinism have access to health and education services without discrimination. Notwithstanding this situation, we have seen positive developments over the years. National task forces on albinism composed of multi-sectoral actors have been establishing various countries in Africa, a region where attacks against people with albinism occur. The first ever regional action plan on albinism was adopted by the African Union as a continent-wide policy in July 2019. We are also seeing a significant increase in activists and civil society organizations representing persons with albinism around the world. However, many of them are in dire need of resources and technical assistance. I call on member states and the international community to build and strengthen partnerships with these groups as a concrete way to accelerate social inclusion and promote respect for human rights. As a 2030 sustainable development agenda promises that no one be left behind, today we stand together with people with albinism all over the world in their fight to live a life that is free of stigma, discrimination, fear and violence. I wish you all well on this International Albinism Awareness Day.