This is ThinkTech, it's our energy show. Where are we? We're in Hawaii, the state of the state. We talk about the state of the state. I'm Jay Fidel, and with me is Peter Rousek, from Hawaiian Electric, and Maria Tomei. I'm only involved in the Hawaii Energy Policy Forum. We'll put it that way. I'm going to talk about two things this time. The first thing we talk about what's going on with the grid. There's news about the grid. There's news about the solar buildout. In utility-scale solar, we want to know all about that. The second part, we want to talk about what's going on with the state energy office. Lation has been proposed to reorganize them. And we'll also talk, we'll continue our conversation from last week with Maria. And I had a wonderful time exploring the leadership issues around energy in Hawaii. That's really juicy. Peter, you're first. All right. Well, as you know, I think I was on the show a couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago anyway, talking about some of this. But last year, we put out a request for proposals looking for more solar energy basically on three of the islands of the five islands we serve. And we got a very impressive group of applicants, from which we chose eight company projects that had been proposed. We have sent those to the Public Utilities Commission just a short time ago. The Public Utilities Commission approved six of them. A couple more are still under review. And we now have sent, since then, we sent to the commission a request that they let us go out for another phase or another stage, depending on who you're talking to, of this renewable energy acquisition. And this is more specific in some ways. First of all, it very much relates to the fact that AES, the coal plant, will end its contract and go out of service. We presume in about 2022, it's September. That would be the end of coal in Hawaii. In effect, there may be a few people burning coal and putting coal in their stockings at Christmas. But not at the utility matter. No substantial amount, anyway. Certainly not on Oahu. And the other thing is Kahului Power Plant, which we have talked about retiring for some time. Kahului Power Plant on Maui, very old, workable facility, but running at the end of its life is going to go out of service by 2024. So five years, we have to make sure that we have enough capacity to replace that and move along. So we were asking the commission to approve this new RFP. The interesting thing about it, if you're a wonk, like you are, is that before, we were pretty much looking for solar with storage. Now we're saying it could be solar with or without storage. It could be wind with or without storage. It could be just storage. Somebody could come in and say, I'm going to build a big battery, and that's going to be able to collect energy during the day when there's a lot and be able to use it other times. We're also asking for something that's called grid services, which is basically getting our customers. We're looking for what we call aggregators or companies that will collect customers who want to have lower bills in return for that are willing to move their demand to a certain part of the day or even turn off demand. And it's more efficient, we believe, and I think the commission believes, rather than we have done this sort of thing in the past. You probably remember, we've got a little device on about 35,000 hot water heaters in the state, which we can turn off if we need to. And this would be a little much more advanced and more technologically sophisticated. Is this geographical, or is it anywhere and everywhere? It could be. It really depends on what the program, you know, what the, it's really up to the aggregator to see whether they, how they want to do this. And I think there might be, I'm not enough for the next part. There may be some advantages in trying to cluster this. And, you know, on relatively small systems, we're kind of clustered automatically. But we want these companies to come in and say, we're going to go out and find customers and utility customers who are willing to participate in return for lower bills and some incentives. And we will provide that service to the grid for, you know, a reasonable amount. Or you'll pay us to enable these things to happen. So that makes it sound like they could be anywhere. Because they'll be using the existing grid, no special geographic or physical structure necessary. It's just a deal you make that the customer makes with the utility to take his demand at hours that are more advantageous. Sure, that's correct. Although it may be that the provider, this grid service aggregator, I wish to have all of their customers in one location. So, you know, they have to put some equipment in and so forth. So they don't want to have one guy in Y and I and one guy in the Hala that they, you know, they'd rather have three or four guys in Y and I, three or four guys in the Hala. That's their choice. OK, that's what that clarifies for me. It's the aggregator you're looking for. The aggregator you're looking for, exactly. And he would deal with the customer. Right. And he would. Or she. Thank you. Well, it, probably. Or it. And the other thing that's happening, this is going hand in hand with our grid modernization effort, because, you know, as we increase the numbers of these diverse projects, big and small, rooftop solar, grid scale solar, wind storage, all these things need to be coordinated and need to be, you know, we need the 21st century grid to allow us to keep the power on, keep it reliable. And so, hand in hand with all this, and the mission also approved a grid modernization proposal. We're still talking to them because we don't, we probably don't understand it clearly. But what does it, what does it mean, grid modernization? Does it mean I look at the whole grid and I see what parts of it need to be refreshed, replenished, renovated in some way, replaced, and then I make a list of those things and I go about the business of taking out the old or fixing the old and making new. Is that what it is? That's part of it. The other part of it is, you know, do we have a computer that can balance off all of these rooftop solars with the grid solar, with the wind farm, you know, that it is or isn't producing at any given moment that can watch the system. And so that if one of the power plants goes down, it knows to instantly, you know, accommodate that. And, you know, it was difficult but not impossible when you just had conventional generators on the system. They were all pretty predictable. There was a dial, you could turn it up, turn it down, and you only had, you know, a relatively small number of them. Now we have literally 80,000 rooftop solar systems that feed into the grid whether we want them or not, whether we can't control that. We're getting more and more of these 30 to 50 to 60 megawatt solar farms, which, you know, a cloud goes over or a bird, you know, forgive me, you know, interferes with the panel and it can create problems. So you need to have a computer system, very sophisticated computer system. Also you're going to have all these aggregators out there. You're not going to be able to, you don't have the time and the energy to pick up a phone and say, can you give me, you know, can you do that? You basically do that with energy management systems and computers. So part of it is the kind of resiliency, hardening the grid, putting in, you know, metal poles instead of wood poles, putting in new transformers or bigger transformers, all the things you described. And part of it is the, you know, the coordination of all that through information technology and communication technology. I mean, we've been doing a lot of- That's brand new. That, well- That's taking us to another level of technology. Exactly, it is. And we have until fairly recently been using cellular for a lot of the communication, for example. Cellular, you know, is okay, but 5G is coming and it works much faster. And cellular doesn't even reach a lot of, you know, little pockets here and there. So you can't depend on, you know, the 20, 10 year ago cellular system any longer. So it is both the hardware infrastructure and the computer technology, information and communication technology. And it all has to go hand in hand.  Or is this another situation where you want a contractor to come and propose, you know, make a proposal to you on specs that you set up? Or is it the utility will actually go out and do this stuff to modernize the grid? Yes. It's a combination- Yes, both. It's a combination of both. In some cases, for some particular projects, we probably, we get a consultant to say, you know, have you had experience doing this elsewhere or you have the expertise that knows how to, you know, to program this sort of thing. We don't, you know, so the computer programming, the software, the code, something we might do with a consultant, we know our system pretty well and we know from experience and from other kinds of things, you know, flying drones over holes and seeing that they're rotten. And so for the parts of it that we just say, you know, we're gonna have to fix that sooner rather than later and here's the schedule and we will do that work or if there's a lot, we may contract that as well. So it's a complicated process. Yes, it sounds like because you have all these things and somewhere along the line, you have to make a list of all these things. It's a million things to do. I have here a list. There it is. Yeah. That'll be on another show. Right, exactly. I'll tell you what it's done. No, it is very complicated and that's why we have, you know, some really great engineers and some really great planners and some really terrific people who are sitting down with us every single day and making sure that one part of this doesn't jump ahead and the other part fall behind. It all has to move along. You know, you can't have one without the other and so it is a complex process. And the old problem is, you know, where do you hide down the technology? Is it today's technology, tomorrow's technology? How do you know you're at the right place in the curve? Sure, just like buying a computer. Do I wait for the next Apple phone or do I buy this one and find out in two weeks that I could have done better? That's part of the whole staging of our renewable energy. Everybody says, oh, do faster, do faster. You know, faster sounds good, but the fact is if you do too fast, you end up with some stuff that doesn't work as well as it might or that just turns out you don't need or that, you know, doesn't fit in with the picture. But you're never going to have a perfect result on this kind of thing because it moves under you. You can quote that. No, you're absolutely right. You can't, but I mean, you've got to go for its perfect system.  That's why you see these RFPs, these requests for proposals are staged. We did a large one and now we want to finish this kind of allotment. When you say modernization, you're really talking about a whole sequence of steps. By the way, I can never forget that your email used to have, but may still have, this great slogan on the bottom said, the best is, the perfect is the enemy of the good. Is that what it was? I've had that one, but lately mine, it says life is what's happening while you're making other plans. Yes, I've seen that. Which John Lennon said, and you know, it really, that's exactly what we're talking about here.  I mean, a year ago, if we'd been sitting here talking about this stuff, we would never have imagined that a volcanic eruption would take when the geothermal off the grid. And we think it's coming back, but we don't know when. So, we assumed then that that would be there and we would build on top of that. Well, good morning, here's the news and that is that it's not there. And it'll get back when we're able to coordinate with the state and the county and PGV. I take away from that, we all have to be flexible. I mean, we all have to realize that the perfect is the enemy, the good and that things change and we will have to change, we will have to always be watching to be relevant, to be connected with the technology as it exists and as it's promised. But let's go back and unpack one thing. You're talking about going out for utility scale installations of renewable energy.  But what is the standard that you are expecting? How do you cast your expectations? How do you set up the specs for exactly what you want? Even if it's vanilla on exactly how they do it. Well, you start by knowing your system and knowing what can be added successfully and you basically say, here's the amount of energy we need, whether it's in the form of generation or in the form of storage or in the form of these services we've been talking about. You come in and tell us what you propose to do and then we look at that and we don't just look at the one proposal, we look at all of them and say, in this case, we'll be looking at a wider variety and so we'll have to figure out. You know, we can't just accept only the solar. You may have to say, we want to have some wind or we may need the storage. We're already going out for more storage on our own and we have a couple of other proposals there. So it is a balancing act. We go out, our general terms are, this is how much we need. It's a number. It's a number of kilowatt hours. Yeah, a number of hours of generation or generation displacement.  You've got to be a rival company. You've got to have, you know, you've got to be dealing with the technology we've heard of and this proven elsewhere. You have to be credible. Yeah, you have to be credible. If you're using real technologies and you're really in business and you're not dropping out tomorrow. Exactly, exactly. And we've been very successful with that. You see the companies that are building here now, you know, it's gone through a number of changes, it's on Edison and NRG and now ClearWay, but basically it's a very reputable company that's done a lot of projects. Eurus done a lot of projects across the United States. So that's part of it.  The last RFP, which we went out, which is a little more restricted, still came back with, I think, three proposals for every one we finally accepted. So some of those, we hope, we'll go back to the drawing board and figure out how they can meet. Oh, that's one more thing. And that is behind all this is always the low price consideration. Within the realm of reality, we want the lowest possible price. And we've done a lot of things to help make that happen because we would never say renewables at any price. Because if you could say renewables at any price, you know, you could do all kinds of things. But you don't actually say the price when you're going out. No, no. You just look at what comes back and see what's cheapest and so forth. Oh, what's the process on this? So you set the specs, you go to the PUC and say, we'd like to make this RFP, is that what it is? The PUC says, okay, that looks good for us. And then, so approve those specs, the whole program. Then you go out in public and you do an RFP and ask people to make proposals. And then you look at the proposals and some will be more credible than others. Some will, you think it worked and some you think maybe it won't work.  And then you go back and get them approved one by one and see whether the PUC is approved. One by one or in the case, you know, you may do a group of them simultaneously, but basically they're one by one. Yeah, that's exactly right. Then you go through a negotiation for the best, you know, the final and best terms. Make sure that's all, you know, kosher and everybody's can meet the commitments, you know, that they have. And then you say, good, go build it.  And not until that moment. And this is very significant because I don't think most people understand it. Until that moment, we have not put a penny, not a dime of customer money or anybody's money into these projects. They're all being financed and paid for and operated by the vendor. So when people say, well, what about this? What about that? What if they don't come through? If they don't come through, we have not lost any money. We lost a little yardage perhaps, but we haven't lost any money. So we don't pay for anything until we see that electricity trickling through the, into the grid. And then we pay for only what we get. So if you build 100 megawatt, whatever wind farm, and you're only able to generate 50, we're not gonna pay you for the 100. We're gonna pay you for what you actually put into our system. That was a constant, I would say renegotiation, but constant monitoring of exactly whether the specs are being met. So how much are you looking for? Well, we're looking for, and it's very hard to describe what we're looking for because it could be all these different technologies. Obviously the numbers for solar are different than the numbers for the solar with storage and so forth. But I can give you the very rough numbers in megawatt hours, which will probably not mean a lot to you, but 160,000 megawatt hours annually for Oahu, which is roughly the equivalent, if it were solar, of 73 megawatts.  For Maui, we want 65,000 megawatt hours annually, equivalent to 30 megawatts of generation. Kahului Power Plant is somewhere close to 30,000, 30 megawatts, so that's roughly a one for one, not quite. And for Hawaii Island, we want 70,000 megawatt hours annually. Equivalents are over 32 megawatts of solar. Plus storage, you know, we need, whether the storage is included in your project or in somebody else's project, we also need storage. You have to integrate those too. Right, so. You might have one which needs the other in order to function here. Exactly. So, you know, a wind farm in particular may not need storage to operate, but for that island, we may need storage because the wind and the solar altogether, we need to be able to combine it. And that goes back to the complications of the process we've been talking about. And it is a, you know, it's a real, it's a, if you get excited by that sort of thing, it's a really thrilling thing to hear. I know you do. This sounds like to be 10% or more of our total demand as far as my electric is concerned. Well, by the time all of these are done, we'll be well over a thousand megawatts of renewable energy on a system that peaks at around 16 to 1800, if I get the number right, I don't know if you're going to. What? A little less. A little less, okay. So this alone would be 10% of the whole pie. Well, this is going to get us by, we have to be at 40% renewable energy by 2030. And we are quite confident barring, you know, the other, the next volcanic eruption or the totally unforeseen. We believe we will be far in excess of 40% by 2030. And as you know, we've got to be at 100% by 2045. We think, again, if everything falls into place, we'll get there a little earlier, get very close. That's pretty exciting, Peter. It's very exciting.  We've stood up, we're jogging now. We know more. Yeah, we know more. There are more, you know, things have changed tremendously. So I think, you know, overall we're moving faster, we're getting more, you know, this last, he said of the eight projects that went into the commission last year, this was the largest single infusion of renewable energy at one time, one portfolio. And this next one won't be quite as large. It's a phase two kind of thing. But yeah, it's getting more and more bigger. You know, a few years ago, when we opened a five megawatt, when somebody opened a five megawatt solar farm here on the island, we were all, we were raving about it. Now 30 megawatt solar facility is kind of, you know, 20 to 30 is sort of the minimum. There's some 60s and so forth. So, you know, we're doing more. Each one is larger, they're coming along faster. It is an exciting time. And you know, the good news, I think for most people is, we got it under control. We're, you know, subject to a lot of things. We are going where people want us to go. That's a perfect segue for us to take a break. Because when we come back, we're gonna talk with Maria about leadership and extension of our conversation from last week to see, you know, in this next chapter you're describing and on the way to meeting these goals, who's on the playing field? And what is their voice on the playing field? We'll take a minute off. We'll be right back. Hello, I'm Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, a host here at Think Tech of IE, a digital media company serving the people of IE. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness in Hawaii. We are a Hawaii nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you go to thinktechhavai.com and make a donation to support us now. Thanks so much. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lo, and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock, live from Think Tech Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body, and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're gonna be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. We're in Hawaii, state of clean energy. But while we had to break, we talked about how long this phase would last. And Peter said, well, within what, three years from now, we'd have it trickling through, so to speak. Yeah, we should have the first projects for sure, and probably a number of the projects in place. As I said, September 2022, AES Hawaii, the coal-fired plan is scheduled to go out of business. But we won't have a one-for-one at that moment, but we will have a substantial amount of what we need to replace them with what we've already gotten, what's already in the works. We will be in good shape. But one thing it tells me is that when you say that we're gonna finish this by 2022, if you ask me code, 2022, it's a long time from now. No, it's not. Not anymore. It is not a long time anymore to 2022. Nor is it a long time to 2030 or 2040 or 2045. So those deadlines are coming closer, and I'm really happy to hear that. Hawaii Electric is so mindful in working toward meeting those deadlines and cranking that in to its process, because they're aspirational in many ways. But if you make it happen, you make it happen. It's no longer aspirational.   It's like the day after tomorrow. And it's, you know, the time moves very, very quickly. And these projects do just take a long time to get through the process, get built, get tested, and so forth. So, yeah, things are going at light speed as far as we can work. Very complicated though, you know, because it's technology, energy is technology, and it's changing all the time. And, you know, we as a community called with the energy community have to come together. So last week, Maria and I talked about how we do that, who's in charge, who will be in charge, how the government will react to the utility, to the consumers, all the agencies and people and providers and contractors. I mean, you have a list, but the list is by no means complete. There's so many people involved. And it was a little less of who, you know, how people are gonna react and, you know, how that dynamic is gonna play out. It was more like, who does what? You know, in the energy space. What do you think we completed last time, Maria? That, well, we started off with the legislature because they're the ones who were setting the policy and the numbers and the means by which we organize ourselves in these efforts, right? And then we talked about the governor because the head of the administrative branch is carrying out the director of the legislature. And then we talked about the energy office, the energy resources coordinator, D-bed and the energy office and whatnot. And then we got down to the office of planning and we're gonna get started on the PUC and so forth. Just a certain extent. Let's not start, oh, sorry, sorry. I'll be there for that one. There's a sign on your door that, you know, was talking about, if there's something new and different, talk about that first. And so there's an idea that was introduced and floating around and being discussed about having the energy office functions overseen by a board, a state board or commission. This sounds like the authority we talked about when Neil Labicromby was first elected. Yeah. And so, you know, I think you've probably had some experience with boards and that. I have, I have, you all have. You know, since we only have a few minutes left on this, I really wanted to hear your thoughts. You know, I can see some positive aspects of having board involvement because you've got more folks bringing ideas and whatnot. But on the other hand, then the focus of office needs to also be managing the board. I mean, the care and feeding of task forces was something that, you know, had been done by the energy office many times. Well, the concern expressed at the time that Neil Labicromby sought, you know, feedback on his notion of having an energy authority was that's a layer of bureaucracy. It costs money. There's political implications. There's delay implications. There's, you know, all kinds of reasons not to do that. When you start talking about a board, you're really talking about a board. I mean, if it's had any authority anyway, it's a board like an authority. And so, those same, you know, complications and issues still apply. But, you know, there are boards in DBED. DBED has a number of attached agencies that have boards. Yeah, I like that. Some of them are more active than others. Yeah, there's a whole list. I think the state, statewide, there are like 170 boards and commissions and whatnot. And, yeah, so it's quite an interesting aspect of the profession. Of course, some of them are regulatory kinds of boards. Some of them are advisory kind of boards. Some of them, you know, like cosmetology and things, help to administer the licenses for who is going to be able to do that particular profession. So, while there are a lot of boards, and not too easy to find volunteers for some of them, there's a variety of different kinds of boards. And that's where, you know, the devil's always in the details. What do you, you know, you have a public utilities commission, what would a board do for state government that the public utilities commission can't or wouldn't or isn't able to do right now?  And it's a hugely diverse number of players who have their own, you know, reporting to the Department of Transportation or regulators or even to the PUC to go get their licenses for their tourist vehicle. So, you know, what the question is, me is, yeah, how would it all fit? What was everybody going to do? And we're going to have a big fight every, you know, in the formation or every time we turn around between one and the other.  But if there's somebody else, some other board that's going to have any kind of regulatory authority that puts the utility in a difficult position, you know, mama said we can do it, daddy said we couldn't. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Oh, that's a valid point. So, you know, I think a clear idea of what and why and not just, oh. Can you see a model here where the boards would not get in conflict where this board that's contemplated by this grid you have on your desk? Kind of a thing. So I guess, you know, to the extent that the energy office was helping to explain to the public and the legislature and the governor and whatnot what the energy options were and the big picture and how it all fit together incorporating the transportation piece, the electricity piece, you know, what resources are available. That's informational. Right. But on the other hand, you have developers coming in using the maps and the other information so that they, you know, can get up to speed more quickly, I think, as you pointed out last time. You know, so those functions are different. So I guess if there was a board that was supporting that aspect of the work. But then on the modeling piece or, you know, the integrated grid plan. You know, it strikes me this, though. The energy office has not been as active as we might have hoped, at least Abercrime, behold, back then. And it doesn't emulate an authority. It never did. And it has a lot of reports that sit on the shelf, including London economics, which is still sitting on the shelf somewhere. So it's not really a regulatory organization. It isn't. And it wouldn't be even with a board, I think. And what's interesting, and I posed this for reaction by both of you, is that what's happened in the past few years is for the lack of action by an authority type organization or an active energy office. The PUC has taken leadership roles. And the relationship between the PUC and the utility, those are the two ends of the nexus that drives energy policy. The legislature is, you know, the legislature. What can I say? But the ideas, you know, the implementation of those ideas, the long-term vision, that comes from the nexus of the utility and the PUC working in. I agree that exciting things are happening at the PUC and in the electricity area, especially even with the distributed energy resources side of it, the empowerment of consumers to meet some of their own needs and provide support to the grid. But the energy piece is much bigger than that. You've got the transportation side of things. You've got the energy planning and policy and also, as you mentioned, the communication piece. So the regulatory functions of PUC were really intended originally to be looking at the monopolies. You know, if you have a monopoly offering an essential service that the public needs, then you need to make sure that it is serving the needs of the public, as well as meeting the requirements of the investors and all the rest of that stuff. We like to call it the franchise. There you go. But that is not the extent of the energy piece. You suggest that we're missing something. We're missing some organization, some person, some entity of some kind in the landscape that is covering these new areas. Are we missing something? Well, I think there are things that have to be done. I'm not sure that the approaching it from we need an entity is the answer to the question. 10, 11 years ago, the state and the utility came up with the Why Clean Energy Initiative. And with the support of the federal government, it was signed on to. Actually, the fed signed an agreement first. And then the utility thing was separate. At any rate. At any rate. Well, carry on. I like that version. But the point is there was a unanimity among most of the stakeholders who had to do these things, not always about how we had to do them. But that we had to do some things. The objective was achievable. The objective was achievable. That was the extent of it. Everybody came together. And we made substantial projects. Our progress over 10, 12 years. With having something to go to the commission for approval along the way. Part of it, yes. Yeah, part of it. So we didn't have to at that time.  We kind of agreed, as happens in a lot of, it was sort of non-governmental. Certainly not a armed listing. Yeah, no, I'm not suggesting it was simple or easy. I'm just saying we didn't have to create an energy czar or a board of directors or all that kind of stuff that was going to try to enforce this. People said, we kind of agree with what we have to do. Let's move forward. And it won't get us to where we are today. Whether we need some new agreement or what, I don't know. I'm always wary of creating, as you say, another level of bureaucracy that has to feed and be fed and only adds to the difficulty. So I think, as you said before, as we discussed, this is not a clear path kind of thing. It's a kind of a stumble along, see where you are, stumble along a little forward. Wayfinding. Rather than a roadmap, it's wayfinding. At the announcement of the Clean Energy Initiative, you and I were there together. And there was this agreement that Linda Lingle had reached with the utility and the consumer advocate, I think it was, and the federal Department of Energy. There was 100 pages long. And I said, Peter, what's in there? Just don't worry, Jay. This is more an agreement to agree than an agreement. It's a statement of intention that we are going to somehow work together to work this out. You remember all these things I said. I don't know if I remember saying them, and I'm not sure that I did. That could be right. It was substantially an agreement that we're going to work together to get along. There were certain goals set, and some of them came to fruition, and some of them fell by the wayside. And progress was made on that basis. And especially, I don't know about other jurisdictions, but in Hawaii, a lot of stuff gets happening because people agree to agree. And we'll work together. Was that about details? Were the details being recorded? Because at the end of the day, each of the parts that are involved, first of all, things are going to change. Second of all, there are projects that are going to have people that are concerned about them for other reasons. You say, let's build a wind farm. There's a community there. There's a lot of other things going on. There's the environmentalists who are concerned about the birds, and there's the bats and all kinds. So for an individual project, you have to be open to allow people to come in and say, wait a minute, what about our concern? For an overall picture, you can't get all those people into the same room. So all those people are everybody in the state. This is the challenge. So you get the key movers, the PUC and the utility for sure, and some support from the federal government and the labs were part of that. We're very, we all agreed, and nobody was going to stand up and say this completely stinks. And then we moved from that through different plans and different progress. And I just don't think you could sit back and say, let's create a foolproof system that will do all these things. Because as soon as you do that, the next day, you're going to run into something that you didn't plan for. And we have to be faithful to our own sense of evolution, our own identity. We're out of time. Maria, can you close? Sure. OK, so we didn't get through the list of who does what in energy. In fact, we added more to the list. But it's been a very interesting and stimulating discussion. And good things are happening, but there's a lot more work to do. It's good to talk about these things. Too often, we're kind of in our, we're looking at this project, or this RFP, and nobody's stepping back. And you're always stepping back, Jay. That's the thing about it. I say the same for you guys. Thank you so much. We have to continue this conversation. Thanks. Thanks very much, Peter. Good to be here as always.


Up here we have our power monitor device that is deployed at the front building. We are sending the data back using this Wi-Fi antenna to our server at H&EI. The device is connected to the main breaker here to monitor the power usage at this building. And we are comparing it to these commotion meters to see what is the accuracy of our device. This is the latest hardware revision of our power monitor. We have three-minute component on this board. There's input board which connects to these weatherproof connectors. The input board then goes down and connects to what we call the motherboard. The motherboard contains the power monitor chip itself as well as an FPGA chip, which stands for Field Programmable Gate Array. The FPGA handles the IO to the power monitor and then sends it back to our COM board up here. The COM board contains the GPS chip, the mesh network chip, as well as the LTE modem for communication back to our server. And everything is connected to this single board computer which acts as the brain for our whole system.


Now this afternoon the Yankees swapped a couple of pitchers Designating Sal Romano for assignment and recalling Michael King from the minors King was one of the topics Aaron Boone discussed in his pregame media session after he was asked how confident he is that the Yankees will make the playoffs His answer provides our code of the day Toyota I Know we're gonna do it. I mean There's I feel like there's a ton of confidence within that group right now The reality is we've played really good baseball to get ourselves back into it for a couple months and just had a terrible week right now and I am confident that will come out of it and That's still even our best baseballs ahead. That's our focus and And I'm confident that'll happen and in tie on is still in a walking boot. Oh He's actually doing his rehab over at Yankee Stadium Still as we speak I know they were trying to get him out of the walking boot today But I haven't I haven't got a report on on everything that he's done or how it went today And Michael King added to the roster what were the reports on the way he has been throwing the ball And how do you envision him fitting in? Yeah, really? Well, he's in his last his last outing to was able to build up a little his previous outing He went he was gonna go like two and two innings and maybe 35 pitches or so He was so efficient. He's he struck out a bunch of guys, but one like two and 21 pitches So then he went another one and went I think three and 41 this last last outing through the ball really well Reports have been really good. I know he's in a good spot ready to contribute So, you know, he could find himself in a number of different roles could be a high-leveraged spot in a particular inning Could be where we need a little bit of length or that's two or three innings, but we feel like he's Ready to go and built up to be able to you know, if we needed two or three innings He could give that to us Any other questions for Aaron? You go back to Dan Martin Sorry, Aaron we talked to you the other day about labor and you know He expressed his frustration about just how the whole season has gone Given what you guys need from him given, you know, how the office is struggling right now What does he need to do over these last few weeks to get that confidence back up and be You know the productive players that that he's been in the past play well, and then we're at the most important time of the season You know falls around the corner. We have a chance to do something really special as a team We feel like if we are gonna do something special as a team I feel like he's gonna play a big part in that and you know, you can You can do a lot now in the in this final weeks of the season Hopefully on into the postseason that You know kind of make a up-and-down difficult season a lot sweeter and a lot better and and make a lot of people forget about it because these are important games moving forward and he's a really good player and Hopefully his best games are ahead of him


Hello. Good afternoon, colleagues. Hello. I know it's very difficult to have an event during lunchtime, but we promise you a very interesting discussion. So please, if you can bring your lunch and come to hear us, it will be great. We're waiting for you all. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. So good afternoon, everyone. Ladies, gentlemen, deal, colleagues, friends. It's always very hard, I know, to eat and listen, but we'll try to make it as enjoyable as possible, not to be boring. So I'd like to welcome you here today. Hopefully, in a very, very interesting discussion, you will love it. It's a side event during the International Dialogue of Migration. And I think after the very, very interesting sessions that we had in the morning and the opening remarks and the singing, we understood that the IDM this year is about human mobility induced by climate change. This session is called Informing the Future, Understanding Human Mobility in the Context of Disaster, Climate Change and Environmental Degradation. But also in this session, we're going to introduce something extremely interesting, which is our Climb Tool. And Climb Tool is a database compiling over 1,500 national policies from more than 172 countries, and it will be all available and we'll see the animation of it by the end of the opening remarks. I think this discussion is needed now more than ever. During 2020, too, in Asia Pacific alone, 140 disasters last year happened, actually affecting more than 64 million people. 70% of sub-Saharan African countries are highly affected by climate disasters and are among the world's most fragile countries. In Middle East and North Africa, we have seen how Daniel Storm affected Libya, Derna City, which was already suffering from multiple crisis, causing increasing in the displacement number, more than 40,000 people being displaced between day and night, plus the children, women, young people and elderly who lost their lives and lost their homes. I'm happy that we are here today with experts, with member states, with UN family, with civil society, with young people, with leaders to discuss and share knowledge, experiences, and also commit through your leadership to the human mobility induced by climate change.  Please allow me to introduce our colleagues, the panelists here, that are going to give us the opening remarks before we go to the extended session. Let me start by my colleague, Jonathan Prentis. He's the head of the Secretariat of UN Network on Migration. I think we all heard about the GCM, and he's the lead of the GCM. So please, Jonathan, we'd love to hear from you. This one is working. I can hear this one is working. Thank you very much, Rania. It's a real pleasure to be here at the opening of this panel discussion, to welcome you today as we launch, as Rania was saying, the climate database. Policy vehicle for better understanding human mobility in the context of climate change and environmental degradation. My particular thanks at the outset if I may go to those colleagues at IOM and the platform for disaster displacement who led the work in developing this database on behalf of the Network on Migration. Climate contains a numerous multitude of national, bilateral, and regional policy instruments with relevance to human mobility in the context of disasters, the adverse effects of climate change, and environmental degradation across at least 170 countries. This I think is reflective of two important points of observation. Firstly, that human mobility as related to climate disasters and the environment is of relevance everywhere. It cannot be seen as a far away problem. It cannot be pigeonholed to one region or sub-region. And secondly, and following on from that, the global compact on migrations focus on partnership and cooperation becomes ever more salient. I think that while my first point will be captured in my colleagues' presentations on climb, I wanted to use these very brief opening remarks to reiterate that call for partnership supported by the Network where we can pool our collective expertise to help develop effective responses for all impacted communities. As we know, the global compact for safe, orderly, and regular migration recognizes the devastating intersection of climate change and human mobility and the urgent need for greater cooperation among states, the UN system, and stakeholders to help affected lives. Last year at the First International Migration Review Forum to assess progress in delivering on the commitments of the global compact, this urgency was reinforced with the call to establish more safe, orderly, and regular pathways for those most affected by these phenomena. And it will be important that this call be further advanced in the run-up to next year's regional reviews. The compact, the progress declaration, the assessments that we make on delivering on the compact have no meaning unless we can see progress on the ground. The Network's focus will increasingly prioritize climate change and human mobility. We have been pleased in this regard to see the Migration Multi-Partner Trust Fund Steering Committee identify this topic as a priority and that the fund is turning this call into action by supporting responses through joint programs in regions such as the Horn of Africa and the Pacific, as well as most recently in Brazil and in India, focusing on knowledge gaps, safe migration frameworks, climate resilience strategies, and addressing health challenges. We also note with interest that discussions on elaborating a proposed limited set of indicators for the GCM have also touched on climate change as important for monitoring progress. Today, we continue this work. Climb is an important tool to help us realize the importance of policy coherence across this dimension of human mobility. As it will be regularly updated, it will help us learn from each other. By collaborating, by sharing knowledge, we can pave the way for a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. And thank you for joining us today. Thank you so much. Thank you, Jonathan, and thank you for referring for IMRF and our commitment that has been presented in an important policy document and will also influence the different national plans in every country in every continent. Thank you so much for that. Now, please allow me to introduce His Excellency Mr. Emmanuel Antawi, permanent representative of Ghana to the United Nations Office at Geneva. Please. Thank you. Thank you, Madam moderator. It's a pleasure to be here with you at this event to launch Climb Database. Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to start by congratulating the UN Network on Migration, the platform on disaster displacement, the international organization for migration, all donors, partners, and experts for advancing our understanding and our joint vision that migration policies and practices are part of the solutions. Solutions that can address the challenges as much as seize the opportunities posed by environmental and climate change to human mobility. It is remarkable to note that 932 national instruments in 171 countries have been identified, combed, processed, analyzed, and shared. Indeed, significant amount of work and knowledge has been gathered in the Climb Database that we are launching today. The Database is an innovative and valuable tool for policymakers, and all those who work on human mobility in the context of disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation. It provides an analytical framework with indicators which can be used for future monitoring and review efforts from a migration governance perspective. Good migration policy is concrete. It is not an abstract concept. We can all benefit from practice sharing. I would like to provide three further insights for the opening of this event. Firstly, the work we present today is valuable in terms of advancing the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. I am honored to represent my country's engagement on advancing the implementation of the GCM. Ghana is one of the six African and three Ekoas countries that have volunteered to be champion countries of the GCM Voluntary National Report. The report recognizes that all well-managed migration is widely perceived as an engine of economic growth, innovation, and sustainable development. It states that the GCM implementation in Ghana can be decoupled from existing national migration management processes and programs rooted in the national migration policy and in Ghana's commitments under the SDGs. Secondly, the climate database is new, but it builds on long-term investments to bring the environmental dimensions of migration to the forefront of policy agendas, in particular through the advocacy of climate-vulnerable countries. I am equally honored to speak today on behalf of Ghana in its presidency capacity of the Climate Vulnerable Forum and the Vulnerable 20 Group, the CVF and V20. The CVF is an international forum for countries most threatened by climate change, representing 1.5 billion people worldwide, but responsible for only 5% of global emissions. In May 2022, at the International Migration Review Forum in New York, Bangladesh is embedded on behalf of CVF a pledge regarding the implementation of the GCM. Under the leadership of Ghana, the CVF implements the pledge through the initiative Migrants for Change in partnership with IOM. Thirdly, I would like to conclude on the relevance and timeliness of the climate database from the perspective of climate-vulnerable countries. CVF member states are committed to sharing their trajectories from vulnerability to prosperity. To do so, the impacts of climate change on human mobility cannot be ignored while the contributions of migrants and diasporas to climate action. The database shows that practices are mainly focused on addressing the adverse environmental drivers. On CVF's side, the climate prosperity plans correspond to this vision, as CPPs aim to support efforts in mainstreaming climate action with a focus on adaptation and resilience in economic and financial planning. CVF collaborates with IOM and PDD to integrate human mobility in the CPPs. Most importantly, the added value of the database is to emphasize that, is to emphasize what is still missing and where we need accelerated action. And these are the development of legal pathways in response to disaster, climate change and environmental degradation. We need to support the multiple contributions that migrants and diasporas make to climate action. In this regard, I am honored to lead the jury of the Migrants for Climate Award in collaboration with IOM and the Global Forum on Migration and Development. I invite everyone to follow us in the coming weeks as we will share inspiring M4C initiatives. To conclude, Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, we need to remind ourselves that three decades have now passed since the publishing of the first IOM report on environmental migration in 1992. Fifteen years since the first IOM International Dialogue on Migration on this topic and five years since the adoption of the GCM in 2018, climate change is not forcing, so we need to accelerate our efforts wherever we have an opportunity to act. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Immanuel, for the great insights and congratulations to Ghana for the great work they've been doing and on our road to COP28. I think that Ghana experience, along with other countries that have been hand-in-hand working with different UN agencies, with IOM, with communities, this experience has to show results in COP28 to take it forward and be great examples to other countries. Thank you so much for sharing the insight and we're looking forward. We'll be waiting to see the upcoming inspiring initiatives from Ghana. Thank you for that. Please, a big applause to our two guests who gave a great opening remarks to inspire the upcoming discussion. Thank you so much for your intervention. Now let me call Immanuel, my colleague to start the moderation for the coming session, but before that, we promised a very interesting animation on Climb, so it's coming now so you can enjoy your lunch and you can see the animation, please. Every year, our world faces unprecedented challenges due to disasters, climate change, and environmental degradation. Millions are compelled to move due to sudden onset disasters, while the livelihoods of millions more are affected by slow onset climate change, with many leaving their homes and others remaining trapped in areas at risk. When people can move safely, orderly and regularly, communities flourish. Many governments and partners are working together to address these challenges. For the first time, a database collects these efforts and makes them accessible to all. This comprehensive database compiles policy and legal instruments and practices in forming future priority actions in policymaking and research. Join us in making this database dynamic and truly useful, and in shaping a sustainable future where human mobility meets climate change head-on. Be part of the solution. All I hope that you can hear me is a pleasure being here today in such an exciting and dynamic event, even if after lunch it's my pleasure to thank Rania, Mr. Jonathan, the ambassador, for the first part of this side event. I would like to start by saying a few housekeeping notes so that we are all, we will today launch the climate database. This will be around one hour discussion. I would like to also remind all that there is simultaneous translation in Spanish, French, and English online and also on the room. It is a pleasure once again to be here with you all. I would like to start by saying that today we will have a very relevant panel of politicians, practitioners, and colleagues that work on this thematic with us. We will ask them a few questions, but we will also have a presentation on what the technical work on climate is because I think it's very enriching to understand a bit more of the technical dynamics of this process. And as such, I would also like to remind all that there is a reason why we are here. There are key data points and key information that we all need to retain in our days. Climate change and human mobility is the defining issue of our times. We are in an era that that is evident. And IOM has been on the forefront of these discussions and on the forefront of opening the path for today, that topic being central stage of the IDM as has been done in the past. As DG Amy has mentioned on the beginning, disasters are on the rise. Our partners at UNDRR and others continue to point to the appalling reality of disaster displacement. No one should be displaced. We have to change in work to make sure that people are safe, empowered, and informed to make decisions about their mobility. Today this side event allows us to bring better understanding to that context, to bring better understanding on the efforts of having enough data to make informed decisions. A key principle of what the future will be on hard decisions and policy decisions, many of them for the day after, not for the present, despite the impacts that we see already on the present. I would like to highlight that this online and living database has more than 1,578 national policy instruments from 172 countries and 230 bilateral or regional policy instruments. This is a tool and a repository of knowledge, of tools that we can use to make the difference in the lives of many people. And you will hear from the experts today that process of creating the database is utility and we hope that this can spark interest not only to use it, but also to contribute to it. It's supposed to be live, it's supposed to grow, it's supposed to unite us on the purpose and the objectives that brought us here today. The complex and multi-casual nature of population movements in the context of disasters and the adverse effects of climate change and environmental degradation are evident across these database. The database looks at policy and legal instruments, but also on practices from a different range of fields, including human mobility, disaster risk management, climate change action and sustainable development. It shows the need and the progress made on policy coherence to integrate migration in environmental policy and vice versa, but also to integrate environmental considerations on migration policy. Before I open the floor to this fruitful discussion, I would invite two of our distinguished panelists to speak to the present key findings and to give also a short demonstration on the climate database. I would like to invite, my pleasure to invite, first of all, Mr. Adler Solberg, the head of the secretariat at the Platform of Disaster Displacement to present the key insights from the analysis developed based on the data combined in the climate database. Adler, our colleague or friend, please, the floor is yours. Thank you, Manuel. You can hear me. I can hear. So thank you so much and good afternoon to everyone. I think I need to congratulate IOM for choosing the topic of today. That's a great initiative and your leadership on this is very appreciated. Also, thanking the UN Migration Network for the partnership you are having on the climate database and the government of Germany, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation or Economic Development Corporation and GSI for financing some of our work. I work for the secretariat of the PDD and I'm very honored to also be in the same panel as our chair, the European Union and our previous chair, the government of Fiji. So what I've been asked to do is to say a few words on the background for the climate database and Kerry Lin will go more into the details of what the database can offer. I want to see a few words on the background that for the platform on disaster displacement to support this database is fundamentally about our support for the implementation of the global compact for migration. And I've already heard today that there are two key objectives. One on addressing the drivers and the structural factors that compel people to move or to compel them to leave the countries of origin. And the compact explicitly lists disasters, climate change and environmental degradation as part of those drivers that we need to address. The global compact also speaks in Objective 5 about creation of flexible pathway for safe regular migration. I've also heard about that today already, how important it is that when people are compelled to move and there are no other options left that their movement is safe. We are very honored as the platform on disaster displacement to be mentioned in Objective 2 of the global compact and as long as we stay in that text we will be around supporting the implementation. The database we are seeing today was part of a larger joint efforts with IOM, with support from Germany and with partners in preparation for the International Migration Review Forum in May 2022. What we wanted to do was to support states to have a tool so they could better do a review of implementation of the global compact and in particular the two objectives I already mentioned. Objective 2 about addressing drivers, Objective 5 about pathways. We developed an analytical framework which brings in a few indicators that states and others can use to see to what extent some of the policy instruments recommended in the global compact have been implemented. We also developed a database of policy instrument as they have been developed at the national level and also to a smaller degree at the regional level. Finally, the project involved a mapping report and an analytical analysis of the state of the art and the policy landscape in terms of implementation. We have a few slides that I will go through and before I do that I wanted to stress what we have already heard about it today and you mentioned it Manuel about policy coherence. The discussion we are having today is also standing on the shoulders of other global policy commitments. I have heard that already in 2010 the parties to the climate change convention recognized the link between climate change, migration, displacement and planned relocation. We heard in the previous panel that this has been an increasingly focused approach to climate change. There has been increased attention to the challenges of human mobility related to climate change under the climate change convention negotiation. We have a key opportunity in the next contrast of the parties to ensure more funding in order to avert minimized address displacement. Another policy framework is the sender framework for disaster reduction. We have the global compact for migration in 2018 and also the twin document which is the global compact on refugees. These are important tools we have to turn to when we seek to implement measures that can avert, minimize and address the challenges of human mobility in the context of the adverse effect of climate change. So this suggests that there are challenges in terms of climate change. So this suggests that there are challenges in terms of policy coherence how we bring these global policies together. It suggests very strongly it will all have to be based on partnership, whole of government and whole of society approaches. And there is a strong challenge related to coordination of these measures. So I just wanted to stress the point that we are here today standing on the shoulders of a variety of other policy instruments and global commitments. I will now quickly walk you through five key findings from the analysis we did in the context of presenting to the International Migration Review Forum last year and what's in the climate database as it is today. The first is that policy development and we're talking about policy development that are related to making sure that human mobility are part of disaster risk management efforts, climate change adaptation and resilience effort. And we're talking about policy instruments that are migration governance related but that they recognize the challenges of the adverse effect of climate change. So we can see of all these instruments we have identified that there is policy development across all regions. That there are certain regions where we have seen more proliferation and more enactment of laws, policy and strategies. And Africa and America stand out as regions where there has been significant development in these areas standing on the shoulders of some of the policy instrument I mentioned. These are numerical numbers. So that means a region like the Pacific may not come out too clearly but we will hear from our colleague from Fiji that there are significant and concrete national law that speaks to these issues for example in the country of Fiji. So happy to announce there are policy development that we can work on at the national level. That is one finding from the mapping and from the climate database. The second finding is that policy development is more relating on addressing drivers. Those recommendations we find in objective two of the global compact rather than on facilitating human mobility and speaking to migration governance. So that means that there are probably or there is likely and that is the finding of the database that we need more development related to bringing climate change, environmental degradation and the challenges of disaster into migration governance that the end of the day will be necessary to make sure that mobility is safe, regular and orderly. And you can see high number of climate change policy instrument that speak to the challenges of human mobility which is great achievement and probably a reflection that under the framework Convention on Climate Change older than 2010 this challenge was recognized. The third finding from this mapping and the database is that regional priorities set the tone for policy development and I think this is quite simple. It is the type of hazards is the type of context and regional or national solution that will drive policy development. So there are different needs depending on whether hazards are more sudden onset or seasonally oriented or whether we are talking about fundamental long-term challenges for example related to sea level rise. So across the database you can see that regions have specific priority setting the tone for policy development. The fourth finding from the database is that there is a growing number of policy instrument and tools being developed but then of course the implementation is what is remaining. So this database does not really speak much to what extent these instrument have been implemented what has been their efficiency and effectiveness but they are there and there are tools to be used moving forward. And my fifth finding from the database and our analysis there is still huge potential and scope to work harder on crosscutting eases related to human rights and gender and also whole of government approach. So this is Manuel Snapshot who was in the database. We need to work on the database to add more policy instrument, continue the analysis and I'm inviting governments to see this database the analytical framework that has been developed to support it as a tool to assess capacity and as a tool to set priorities going forward because as we have heard today it's time to act and that time is today. Thank you so much. Thank you Atle and I would invite all present to be part of this call of action bring these policies forward let's work together which is the essence of these two days a dialogue to create new bridges new partnerships to take this forward and as such I would like to give the floor to Ms. Caroline Mays the senior knowledge management coordinator at IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Center she will provide us with a step-by-step demonstration on the database functionalities interface and innovative features so that we all live here with a bit more understanding on how we can operate the database too. Thank you Caroline, your word. Thank you very much Manuel for the introduction and it's really a pleasure to be here. As Manuel mentioned my name is Caroline Mays I lead the knowledge coordination unit at the Global Migration Data Analysis Center which is based in Berlin and it's there that we work hand in hand with the network secretariat to develop and run the migration network hub which I'll tell you a little bit more about that's what's hosting this climb database and so we are waiting for the there we go to come up and as we begin so what my role is going to be is to present to you how to find the database and how to navigate once you are in the database and so what you can see now is that it's based on the UN network on Migration's general website you can find it there and you can also find it in many different access points within the landing page right now because we really want to promote it and so I'll be walking you through it in just a moment. One of the things I just really wanted to say though is that the development of this database has really just been a fantastic example of putting knowledge into action so having it based from the work that the network work stream had been doing that was led by PDD and IOM to map all of these policies the purpose of this database is to be able to visualize what is the outcomes that Adley was talking about and from that we have knowledge and knowledge when it's shared that's how we create impact and so it really has been an exciting opportunity and initiative to be working hand in hand with the colleagues to be able to develop this and we're really proud about what this page is going to be able to do and of course just absolutely honored to be able to host it on the network website and as well on the migration network hub and before I begin I also just want to make sure that I make a few points I have a tendency to run along in conversation and forget things so before I move on the team has also emphasized that this is a very much a living database and so it is exhaustive from the mapping that has been done but it is not necessarily fully exhaustive of all possible policy instruments out there we do want to be able to hear from anyone who might see a gap or might see something that does need to be added I'll provide you with the contact information so that you can upload things and this database in general it is alive so it will continuously be updated and maintained so that you're able to access the information easily and accessibly and I also just wanted to add that we're launching the database today but also whenever you put any sort of website live there's always moments of tweaks that have you suddenly discover things that need to be fixed and so we are using this opportunity as well to be able to incorporate any sort of additional changes that might have to be made in time for the COP held in November so that we can also very much showcase this database at the COP and about the human mobility context in climate change and so just to note as well in terms of feedback if you have any comments on the database in the coming days then please tell us and we will be happy to update that as well and it's also been updated for mobiles and so you're welcome to look at this on your mobiles even as we speak so now just to talk about how to find it so as I said on this page on the network website page you can find it easily as time goes and more content gets added of course there will be other things that will be promoted but it will always be found on the migration network hub and so what you can see in the tab and I think Lulia she's over there she's maneuvering the mouse I apologize my hand is naturally doing all of this so we're in the migration network hub page and what you can see and if you don't mind Lulia just scrolling down a little bit so the migration network hub is itself a very important manifestation of an enactment of the GCM itself so the GCM did call for the implementation of a knowledge platform and a connection hub within the GCM in paragraph 43 and so this has been merged somewhat together to be known as the migration network hub and this is where it really is that the main external knowledge management tool for the network on migration on everything to do with the GCM all the content is curated and organized in relation to the 23 objectives of the GCM and all kinds of tools can be found here such as the Climb Database so if you can just scroll up a little bit upwards Thank you and so what we'll do now is we'll go into the Climb Database so you can come in from here you can also come in if you scroll over the top of the tab there below, there you go it's also found in the main navigation plane as well so you can easily find it and access it once you're on the page we have intentionally just kept this a very simple page easy to navigate and it is yeah so it does as you can see in the outline it gives a brief summary of what is there and then it gives an overview of the as Adelaide mentioned over 1,573 I think different policy instruments national instruments in 172 countries and you can see right there that in the database they are organized by these different topics of human mobility, disaster, climate change sustainable development and other thematic areas you can see how many policies are in the database for these specific themes each one of the policies has been tagged according to its main subject area so this way you can see which is of relevance and you can also then do searches where we combine certain ones together if you don't mind scrolling down just a little bit Lulia so what we see here is the overall just easy to view dashboard of different content that you can find in the summary what Lulia just clicked there is that you can go from the globe view if you want or you can go to the map view just because it's fun but I'll keep it on the map view just to keep everything simple now what you can see now is for instance if you were to click on human mobility what you will see is on the right hand side you will see the number of policies that are in the database that have the most going down in terms of policies available on that particular topic and so right now you will see that's Ethiopia, Somalia in terms of human mobility, Albania and now we could also click shall we say on disaster and so what we are seeing now is that they have both human mobility and on disaster and you can also again see the countries which have the number of policies and you can get a quick view of what they have and on the bottom there when you're clicking on the country what you're seeing is there's dates in a bar graph and that's showing you within the country when they developed their different policies and how many policies that they've developed over the years so you can see just kind of a chronology of growth if you'd like to view by region you can go to the left hand side and you can click on for instance Africa and you will see the countries actually if you could just reset because it's now on human mobility and disaster no stay where you are just go to the reset button there perfect so reset your search because right now it's only looking at human mobility and disaster so now you can go to Africa all right there's a reset that I'll just have to get arranged in there no go up go up sorry right there sure so if you go on to yes Africa yes you'll see all of the different countries within the region and you'll be able to see the breakdown in terms of the policies that are available same for the Americas if you click on that you'd be able to see again if you unclick Africa there you go and then you can see for the Americas and it'll give you the list down again in terms on the right hand side of the different the number of policies for the different countries and then from here you could do an advanced search but I'll go to that in a little bit if you don't mind scrolling down just a little bit more and so what you will see here is just the bar graph that Adelaide has already provided which is showing you the overall breakdown in terms of the different policies by topic over the years and that you can just certainly see the growth in terms of policy development over the last several years meaning of course policy development is one part of tackling an issue implementation of course being the next if you can go down now just to region so if you wanted to just see just from an analytical perspective we'll give you a summary in terms of by region you can see the different the different breakdown of the policy instruments and as well by thematic area region specific priority and GCM actions and objectives so that you can see the breakdown in terms of the various breakdowns within the GCM so from here you can go to actually exploring the database itself and so what we have as we come up here is again you have the total number on the right hand side and you can do the various filtering but what this gives you is the actual opportunity to now go into the various policy instruments if you want to read specifically and so you can also do your search by any number of these you can go by year if you like just by moving the cursor over the circle over at the end all good and then if you go scrolling right down I mean for instance we'll just take an example of the Philippines for instance as they have an excellent policy that was I think discussed earlier if we go to there we go down to Philippines and so what will happen there is you'll see all the different policy instruments that are available developed by the Philippines and so you do see that there are certain markers that are there and so that's simply to indicate which ones are specifically time bound in which ones are currently being implemented if you would like to actually read the policy instrument you just need to go to the link and then you can click and you can see just an overall summary access the publication itself or scroll down and you can find additional information that will tell you including about the markers can you just scroll up a little bit before we go into there I'll show you the markers in terms of a child marker gender marker and specific relevant GCM objectives so that way it's looking specifically at the policy from the GCM lens as well in terms of other priority areas as well and it gives a certain grading in terms of explanation as to what extent does this policy go into these specific areas and then of course at the bottom you see kind of the extracts from the policy itself that are relevant to climate change human mobility and just to give you a nice sampling of what to find and where to find it so we can just go back up and so this has opened a different link so you can just go back to the page and that brings you here now earlier on the main landing page you had the option to see about and then as well from here you can also see about I have a Canadian accent I heard it when I said if you can click the about and there we go and now this is going to give you a full overview in terms of what was the methodology in the first place for the network to be able to do the research and to do the mapping you will also find sources and limitations and the definitions that are being used and frequently asked questions and if you can scroll down just a little bit you can just see the explanation as well in terms of how the different markers are being used and assigned the way that the instruments were selected and keep on going down and just kind of what the database does and what it does not so that we manage our expectations and then you can keep on scrolling down and just get a better understanding of the overall view of of the content of the database and again at the very very bottom you will find frequently asked questions so I hope I have been within my time and yeah I'm really excited about this and very very happy to have it hosted and I really do implore you all to check out the database as well as check out the migration network hub more broadly if you're not familiar with it you don't have to be a registered account user you can look at this publicly but if you'd like to register an account to work within the hub and to be able to upload documents yourself then we'll give you that as well thank you very good to hear these details I think this is a very good segue to our next conversation I'm very honored to be able to introduce the panelists and the people we also want to hear from but allow me to say before that our colleague from GIZ, Miss Catherine Schmidt the advisor on climate services and human mobility unfortunately is not able to join us to further diversify and strengthen this panel we're unable to make to Geneva she's with us in spirit and I hope for online but I would take these moments to thank our panelists for being here Caroline Atle and to welcome the next panelists allow me to introduce to you Mr. Eduardo Jose Adavega the Undersecretary for Migrant Worker Affairs from the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines thank you sir for being here I would like to also welcome Mr. Annara Lequinella the Deputy Permanent Representative of the Permanent Mission of Fiji to Geneva Annara, a friend and a colleague a pleasure and Miss Susanna Smeden-Stopa the Counselor for Humanitarian Affairs and Migration with a focus on climate change of the permanent delegation of the EU to Geneva is a pleasure having the three of you here a round of applause for them we need to energize a bit this room I would want first to ask a small comment around the climate database because I think this is an excellent segue on how research policy then inform the actions and the decisions of government and so dear panelists my question to you and we will turn two or three minutes to your reflections on these would be how do you see the climate database adding value within your work and the work of your governments and how would you suggest that its collection of laws and policies could also be leveraged for wider use by decision makers researchers and other stakeholders I would ask first Mr. Joseph Vega two minutes thank you sir first thank you to the organizers and thank you for yourselves to yourselves for being here because we're discussing a database I'm sure after the morning session the only data you are interested in was the sandwiches and the only side event is side dishes for the food but now you're listening to us so thank you well how do you increase the value well of course it's a contribution to getting the data to prove the link between human mobility climate change and environmental degradation and because you in this beautiful database you can see data from other countries so each of us countries whether we are migrant sending or migrant receiving has things to share but also many things to learn so we thank you for showing the Philippines advancement in our development policy creation about disaster risk reduction this basement response and we could certainly share them in the world you could see also our focus on inclusion on the rights and welfare of groups in vulnerable situations so the best one we can learn from the best practices of other countries through a database like this we could see where we are deficient like I saw Asia and Oceania we don't have as compared to Africa and Europe I'm sorry Africa and the Americas the development policy identification or creation so that's one one suggestion to be enormous work I suppose this is only in the official languages but maybe among the local stakeholders in each country they could make translation to the local languages to make it reach more people of course it's going to be vast amount of work but at least make it more climate friendly user friendly but it's fantastic we truly appreciate it thank you sir a round of applause we need to also recognize the importance of these words Anare from your point of view the Pacific we all know the challenge we all know the importance of policy support in all of the most vulnerable countries but this is critical and life threatening situations to you how do you see that this sharing of information could be used better thank you Manuela I think from the Pacific we just wanted to touch on what Ed Lam mentioned is on the policy coherence I think when we look at the database we look at the different areas that is being covered we all understand that at the national level we are a bit silent on our application of the documents or the instruments against the global frameworks the database and with the analysis that has been undertaken I think it gives us good ground to look at policy coherence at the national level for those of us that develop national plans for implementation and to look at how government approach the issue of human mobility I think in looking at it broadly under the various issues like climate change, human mobility disasters and look at how we can coherently bring that into our national plans for implementation for those agencies that work on the topic of human mobility I think that database provides us good ground it has shown us the landscape of how the instrument aligned with the GCM and how it aligned with other global conventions and we have seen what other gaps as we have noted that while we have been addressing root causes we are lacking in implementation I think that kind of guidance that overall view of the landscape of the documents and how we can apply that at the national level especially for us in the Pacific where a lot of these issues are happening and how we can look at it coherently and to implement it coherently I think that is one of the value of the database as we see and it has been presented today Thank you Thank you so much, Anare I don't... Thank you so much I would also... I would ask the same from Susanna in representation of the EU and having understood all of us have seen the fires and the floods this year which is a different dimension and sometimes we don't see how climate impacts how do you see vis-à-vis these realities on Europe the questions raised by the existence of the database and how can we make these database stronger and useful for the countries of EU and others Thank you very much, Manuel for your question and thank you all the panelists for providing very valuable insight Of course coming from Europe we have a completely different outlook and like our in the keynote speech there was we are not afraid to die in our beds and drown in our beds but and this has not come yet there but we see of course the value of the database and we are more than honored and glad to see this launch of climate database during our chairpersonship of platform on disaster displacement from the database as it was presented now the surface of course when we go inside and it's much more in depth we can see that quality data which is gathered here and the amount of data which is gathered here surpasses the objective that it had in the first place being the GCM baseline mapping project and we are glad that it went further and as one of the main donors in data collection globally our overall objective of chairing of platform on disaster displacement was had been to facilitate exchange of knowledge including data collection and analysis but at the same time for us is using these data to strengthen capacities at the national and regional levels to implement effective practices and policy instruments that can avert, minimize and address disaster displacement when we talk about benefits we think it's understanding the connection between climate change and human mobility and how it is translated in policies and instruments on the second we would say that it really impact policy formulation and refinement because it gives us access to diverse range of policies and legal instrument that can in turn inform strategies on addressing human mobility relating to climate adaptation disaster risk reduction and humanitarian assistance of course and thirdly it definitely facilitates data driven decision making in an era where evidence based policy is paramount the information house in the database offers a robust foundation for our policy making processes I think in overall we will continue on more details because I still have one more round of questions but a round of applause for Susanna for also joining here today I have one final round of questions of course this is a dialogue we don't want to extend this into excessive details but I think it's important these different dimensions this dialogue between member states, practitioners and the affected communities one of the differences of IOM being a leading agency on this discussion and being able to create this convening space so I would go back to Mr. Eduardo de Vega and ask him can you share with us from your perspective on the role of data and evidence and how that has played a role in shaping Philippines policies to protect the well-being of migrant workers affected by climate change the floor is yours sir very brief I remember the mayor of Santiago earlier saying that when they looked at migration there was still a lack of connection in their mentality between migration and human mobility and in the Philippines case normally and we saw it in what was shown earlier the database that in Asia the first priority is protection of workers we just look at migrant workers motivated by economic reasons but now because we are more interested in getting more complete more accurate data we have fast recent laws in order for the data regarding our migration to be more complete more desegregated so that we'll have an idea not just of where they're going or where they're going and how many they are but from which parts of the Philippines in this case we always like many archipelagic countries like many countries in the region were always affected by natural disasters or typhoons because of climate change and we, until recently we have not linked the mentality to think if our migrants are coming from those areas affected by the typhoons different skills from those living from urban areas so we have to have a more accurate basis for that so it's a work in progress and for that again I repeat that we want to share and also learn from you we are planning mission to African countries and Latin American countries not this year next year to also share and this is a great tool for us so nevertheless and that's the reason we want to collect even more accurate data because we're spending resources on protecting our migrant groups so it's always good to have it on the basis of real evidence and not just for example if there is there was recently an earthquake in Morocco and we share condolences with probably Morocco and then somebody announced there were 300 affected Filipinos in this area but there were no 300 they were left for less but this is emphasized the need for the importance of it and by the way we are monitoring for example every year the climate change in Europe including your country and other southern European countries because we have a lot of Filipinos all over thank you I think that dimension of people being affected away from home and at home it's that space that we are all affected there's different vulnerabilities but people across the world in different settings are being affected and mobility is one of the drivers but one of the solutions I would ask and jump a bit of the order of the protocol in reflecting on the use commitment to address human mobility in disaster and climate change contexts what possibilities and challenges you see arising to harness data to advance ongoing initiatives and leadership roles in this area the floor is yours thank you thank you Manuel well we see of course there are challenges and there is plethora of possibilities in challenges maybe I would say that we have to make database comprehensive and current and foster continuous collection of quality data in order to update and to be a living document that it is already and which we can use later on in developing policies and informed decision and one another challenge that I see which is also a possibility definitely that dissemination of course you made sure as the creators of database to create very user friendly platform that we can then disseminate and we have to this is the duty to disseminate to relevant entities in the EU for us in the governments and also regional and community entities who can use the data and utilize to the benefit of general policies but also of the people who we serve with possibilities well I would first say that the possibilities here we see it in first and foremost in collaboration like Philippines said and especially for example Philippines with multiple well I'm not going to say even multiple is euphemism experience in disasters to really reach out to the countries in other regions to assist them and lead by example and here we can the countries like that can have their own leadership us we can have a leadership and we want to have a leadership because we have some means that we can create a strong message in the other part of the world thank you thank you very much for this I will turn now to Anare which is a known champion on climate change on his previous role back in his government on the forefront of response and now here in Geneva advancing the importance of this issue in politics to make our collective safety the climate database demonstrates a lot of good progress in terms of policy development on climate change and human mobility in the Pacific from your point of view what lessons do you think other regions could learn from this progress and the many examples covered in the database the Pacific is a region that has been hit significantly and very well over the years we need to listen to the lessons learned how do you see us advancing on this regard my friend thank you Manuel I think in terms of looking at the region and looking at the work of the database as I mentioned earlier we normally do this at the country level but we understand the challenges that we are facing brought about by climate change in terms of looking at the future of human mobility and the next month the Pacific Island Forum leaders will be looking at the Pacific's human mobility framework where we are presenting it to the leaders to look at how countries can look at some of the things that is contained in the database look at legislation and policy instrument looking at our coherence looking at how we can do partnership at the regional level in terms of looking at the challenges that we are facing I think in terms of looking at the framework that we are trying to present to leaders and looking at the climate database they go in tandem in terms of looking at the lessons learned from other regions in the world in terms of institutions in terms of governance and looking at what we are doing in the Pacific in terms of the human mobility framework that we are putting in place and how we can improve on implementation of the framework not only at the regional level I think that is something that we can take in terms of looking at how we are tackling the issues around climate change as a regional and that is something that when we are looking at the database we are looking at the experiences across countries across regions I think that is something that we can learn from but also in terms of the perceiving being the first to put in place a framework for human mobility for a region I think that is something that countries can learn in terms of looking at the database and how we can work on it collectively to ensure that we address human mobility in the respective regions that we serve in thank you Manuel Thank you so much Anare and to all the panelists the five of you that present in different forms before I ask you all to acknowledge our panelists with a round of applause I would like to make a final point the panel today on informing the future looks at data I think the point Anare and the rest of the panel has made on the importance of the regional dialogue on creating this cohesive approach to policy the pacific framework the Kampala declaration that was discussed today other efforts that are going in other regions of the world I wanted to confirm that IOM stands with the member states to develop these frameworks to develop these policies to create this global pact that we want the mobility to be in the future vis-à-vis climate change so I thank you all incentivize you to look at the database join us on this effort let's unite hands and create this pact thank you to the panelists thanking to you here and online for listening to us a round of applause to all of us Thank you Thank you