Välkomna till panelen. Jag vill säga några ord för att öppna diskussion. Jag vill invitea er att göra en intervju av 5-6 minuter. Och efter det har vi en diskussion. Jag vill invitea frågor från flera. Vi talar om investeringar i landskapet för gränsrätten. Det finns många saker som vi måste klädera. Jag hoppas att panelen kan skälla lite på konceptet i de här terms och också vad de considererar, limiterar och också möjligheter som vi kan hitta. Vi har hela konferensen för diskussion investeringar i landskapet, investeringar i gränsrätten. Det är en stor diskussion här, visst, hur publicsektorn behöver vara med och hur vi kan lägga på privatesektorn. Klimatförändringar är ämning för en väldigt ambitiös kontribution av publicsektorn. Target är satt på 100 miljoner USD per år i 2020. Det här satsar på mycket. Det representerar 0,1 % av världekonomi i 2020. Så till mig är det ganska obvious att vi bara kan hoppas och anser att den gränsrätten kan lägga mycket större investeringar från privatesektorn, från privatefinanssektorn. Det här är en perspektiv. En annan är att när vi talar om regeringar, vi talar om människan. Från en finansperspektiv är det väldigt klart. Jag tror också och växer och hoppas att de regeringar kan ge sig till mer sista praktik och jag tror också att det inte är så att det är lätt. Vi kan ha en hög sista regeringar även i en sista växer som förbjuder på business som brukar. Det här är en annan debatt som vi har. När vi talar om gränskonomi, ofta ekonomister känner sig att det är gräns. De säger att gräns är mer lätt. De gränser känner sig att ekonomi är mer lätt. Jag tror inte att det är så klart och jag är intresserad att hitta panelen på det här också. En annan avklart är många problem i regeringar om investeringar i en sista växer. Kan vi lägga ner transaktion kastat till de sista växer? Finans transaktion. Kan vi bringa ner de kostar av verifiering av det? Sustainability outgåns till en reasonable level. Kan vi upphåll det? Ethics och social responsibilitet i sin investering. And finally, most importantly, kan vi provide the returns that large scale private finance would expect over the long term? These are some of the some of the big questions that we're operating with. So with no further due, I would like to ask Mr. Anavana from from the Asian Development Bank. What are your perspectives and ambitions and visions in in in this area? Please go ahead. Thank you. So good morning or good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. It's a pleasure to be on this panel. And on behalf of the ADB, I'd like to thank the organizers for inviting us to be here. So one of the questions that has been posed to this panel is how can public finance be used more effectively to leverage private investment in sustainable landscape management? And before we answer that question, I think it's important to ask why that question has been posed in the first place. So take for instance a gathering of pulp wood industry or palm oil industry or rubber industry. Do you think they would be sitting around in large gatherings like this thousands of them asking that same question as to how public investment supports their investment in pulp wood or palm oil? I don't think so. Instead they are out there securing the next land concession to go out and develop the next open up a new plantation. And they're often doing this in remote parts of countries where there isn't infrastructure. And they're not asking governments how can governments help them instead they're doing that infrastructure themselves. They're putting in infrastructure and for good measure they're throwing in some additional infrastructure as a token of appreciation to the government for having given them that land concession. So the question I ask is what's different between them and us? And the big difference is that in the case of pulp wood or palm oil or coffee or soybean, the private sector that's dealing with those are dealing with a commodity that has a real price in a real market. And those commodities are fetching enormous financial returns which is what drives the private sector. So if we are serious about investing or encouraging the private sector to invest in natural capital in sustaining landscapes then we need to be able to present the private sector with a comparable returns from investing in sustainable landscapes as the returns they would get from any other investment in that landscape. In other words, the goods and services from managing a landscape the natural capital should be comparable to the returns from coffee or soybean or palm oil. They need to be able to compare apples with apples not apples with lemons. Now, so, but this is easier said than done as we all know the problem is that ecosystem services are difficult to quantify, difficult to value, it's difficult to assign prices and then to develop mechanisms to actually trade on those. So that brings me to the question what is the role of public finance in supporting private sector to investing in landscapes? So the role of public finance should really be to create the enabling conditions that allow the private sector to consider investing in sustainable landscape management as a comparable investment to investing in some other commodity. And so the role of the public finance should then be providing those conditions. Now, the trend, the traditional or the historical trend in this case and in the public investment has been to support investments in landscape conservation, public finance and when I talk about public finance here I'm talking more generally about finance from governments as well as ODA, overseas development assistance which includes finance from Asian Development Bank which I represent. So the trend has been to invest in conservation initiatives directly and this has been useful because first it demonstrates the case to the private sector that there are viable business models in sustainable landscape management and secondly it has often been the stopgap measure that has prevented a tide of change of land uses over a landscape and actually bought some time until some more sustainable financing can be secured. Just before coming out here I was with in the Harapan Rainforest which many of you might know in central and south Sumatra and I've seen firsthand the challenges that Harapan Rainforest faces in terms of grappling with the competing land uses in that case palm oil plantations. Harapan represents one of the few remaining bits of lowland rainforest in Sumatra and it's an island of rich biodiversity sitting in a sea or ocean of palm oil and acacia plantations and had it not been for this consortium of NGOs that got together and got a concession to maintain and to manage that as an ecosystem restoration project Harapan today would also be an acacia plantation. So if one is looking for an example of the importance of conservation that work Harapan presents a classic example of why that's important. But public finance or even donor finances as was the case in Harapan is not a sustainable mechanism for financing conservation work or landscape sustainable landscape work in perpetuity. Instead the funding for conservation and for managing sustainable landscapes should come from the returns that you generate from managing those landscapes. And here again I think we can turn to the private sector for lessons for instance the private sector is very good at managing its capital financial capital.  So in the same way why don't we pay those who manage our natural capital a fee for managing those assets. If the capital stocks in a landscape can be quantified, valued and a percentage of that asset value be assigned as a management fee I'm sure the private sector would find that a very viable business proposition. Similarly these ecosystems generate just like financial capital generates returns from interest or revenue from earnings. These landscape generate returns in the way of sustainable ecosystem service floors and again if these services the floors of those services can be monitored, captured, quantified and valued and the end users of those services be identified be the global consumers of the carbon sinks or local consumers of water supply or irrigation or hydropower operators then they should be paying for those services. So in other words the private sector has developed models on how to manage capital and I think we can learn from those and identify ways that the private sector could also similarly get involved in managing natural capital. So in summing up I think in addition to public investment going into implementation of conservation landscape work it's also important that public investment goes into creating the enabling conditions that would make allow the private sector to compete or to come in and invest in national in landscapes conservation work and so public investment should go into creating policy regimes or the regulatory regimes public investments, public finance should go into looking at fiscal instruments addressing distorting taxes or incentives which might tip the playing field away for against investing in landscapes in ecosystems or creating incentives to create the to even the playing field and promote conservation. Public finance should also go into research to be able to first to better understand the ecosystem services and the values that we generate from them. It should go into awareness information and education to create you know improved awareness about the importance of ecosystems. So in summing up I would say that if we are to attract private sector to address investing or to invest in landscapes for sustainable management of landscapes we need to raise the game and we need to level the playing field and the role of public finance should be in addressing those needs squarely. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll park a question for you for the next round and that is based on what you're saying I don't detect any major role of direct investment from the public sector. I'd like you to think about that until the next round and see if you have any comments on that. Now you represent a very interesting initiative that we would very much like to hear more about because you're directly focusing on investments in sustainable landscapes. And I think you may have made a handout available as well. Yes. And we can say a few words about that too. Sure. Thank you Peter. Before I start I want to make sure that everyone gets a copy of our handouts. We have handouts on Green Prosperity Project and second is handout on landscape, our landscape approach. If you haven't got a copy, please raise your hand. I think my team will be able to attend to you and deliver that copies. I think Peter you have a copy. Dr Ngai. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity for sharing about how MC Indonesia is investing in landscape for green returns. But before I start with how we are doing it, I'd like to explain just very little about what MC Indonesia is. MC Indonesia stands for Millennium Challenge Account Indonesia is an entity, is an institution that is established specifically to implement and execute this partnership program between U.S. and Indonesia. We receive a grant from the U.S. And U.S. in this case represented by MCC, Millennium Challenge Corporation, and from the Indonesia side the leading agencies of Bapinas and Minister of Finance. So MC Indonesia is an independent entity that's established to run this, to implement this program. We have three programs within this partnership. And I think one of them that's most relevant and most interesting for this audience is the green prosperity. And indeed our approach to invest is landscape approach. Now, let me start with the principles or the philosophy of GP or green prosperity project or program. To in a nutshell, I would say that this GP or green prosperity is an interaction, is an intersection or confluence between two pillars. The first one is the management of environment surrounding the investment. The second one is the sustainable economic growth. These two, the intersection of these two is what we call the sweet spot where we are designing how we design the green prosperity program. And then the principles, I would offer three assets that underlies the principle how we design the program. The first S is the sources of the input, natural inputs, the sources of natural input, that's the first S. The second is safeguards, safeguards against negative effect of investments. And the third S is social inclusivity to make sure that to avoid divisive social jealousy for not included in the investment. Because we look at this landscape, not only a landscape of a lifeless landscape but landscape together with life'scape, the people around the people in that landscape, the livelihood of the people. So this is the approach that we are taking. And above all or probably underlying all these three Ss is one big S which is the spatial certainty. Because we believe that without spatial certainty our investment will go nowhere because we have no spatial certainty on what we are going to do in the areas. Now based on these principles then we design this GP investment or green prosperity investments in two sectors, two main sectors. The first one is renewable energy and second is sustainable natural resource management. So what we are doing is we are now, we have identified landscapes from in several provinces in Indonesia. And then within these landscapes we go in through the landscapes bearing in mind the three Ss and one big S. And then we look at what can we do in terms of renewable energy, what can we do in terms of sustainable natural resource management. Of course other investments, these two are not the only investments but we decided to focus on these two, at least for the first part of this program. And then next we will open as because MC Indonesia is granting institutions. We will open windows. There are four windows that we are going to open. We will start to open the first window in July and the rest of the windows will be open by the end of the year. So we will start with four windows, the first window of grant and so on and so forth. So we will have a big announcement in July. But then let me share with you the aha moment when we start, when develop this GP project. This happens about three or four years ago during the formative years of GP. When our team went to visit a village in Merangen, Kabupaten Merangen in the province of Jambi. We went there and we talked to the villagers, the head of the village. They actually learn the need, that they need renewable energy, they need power. So they actually installed a small micro hydro installations, it's only 100 kilowatt. And then the head of the village actually confess admit it. We used to be illegal loggers but we are doing it no more. Because we realized that if we keep doing this, we won't have power for our micro hydro. And this is the aha moment for our team. Wow, this is it, this is GP, that defines GP. So these people understand without just naturally understand. If we don't keep the upper catchment area, we won't have power for our micro hydro. We won't have power to dry our coffee beans. We won't have power to dry our products. So this is the aha moment that defines this green prosperity. So with that I will hand it over to you Peter. And of course I will be happy to entertain questions later. Great, thank you very much. I'll park a question with you also. And it's all very interesting and proactive what you're saying. My question is that if these investments relate to relatively small scale ventures. A, how do you define the verification measures that would apply to be compliant with the access to this capital? And B, how would you keep the costs down so that the transaction of these investments or transaction costs are reasonable? I'll park that thought with you and we can take it in the next round. Now, Milde, we are from the same part of the world. And I was intrigued by reading in newspapers from my country in Sweden about some of the forest industry companies doing businesses that didn't sound totally ethical, at least in the newspaper. I don't know the real story, but I know the newspaper story. What happened was that the investment, the financial investors behind these industries were starting to think whether they should continue to invest. Because they had discovered a variety of issues, child labour, social inequities, etc. in developing countries as a result of investments. I think this is what you are engaged in quite a lot. I'm really curious to hear, when we involve large scale finance, we know that they're interested in keeping the ethics up. But how do we actually do it? Okay, thank you very much. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a little bit about our work. But before going into the specifics, Peter, I think it's useful just to say a few words. Is there something wrong here? No, it's just if you hold it or something. Shall I hold it? You can put it in your pocket. I don't have a pocket. Okay, it's useful just to say a little bit about... It doesn't work. A few words about the pension fund and the council on ethics. I'm keeping this very still. Do you want to keep it for me? The Norwegian Government Pension Fund is a sovereign wealth fund and is invested in equities, bonds and real estate. The funds market value is about 800 billion US dollars. And it's currently a shareholder in 8,500 companies worldwide. So it's a big fund. And the fund as such is not invested in landscapes, but in companies that change the landscape. Would you like to try with that one instead? Yeah. It's on? Okay. So the fund is owned by the Ministry of Finance on behalf of the Norwegian people. And it's managed by NBIM, which is the investment management arm of the central bank. Now the council on ethics where I work is not an investor. It's an independent advisory board to the Ministry of Finance on the exclusion of companies from the fund. So we're actually a divestment advisory body. So companies can be excluded from the fund. There is an unacceptable risk that they cause severe environmental degradation, gross corruptions or severe human rights violation. And the Ministry decides whether or not to exclude from the company, the company from the fund. We're only advisor because the Ministry is the owner of the fund. The council's recommendations as well as the Ministry's decisions are made public. So the council's recommendation to exclude a company is based on quite thorough research and concrete assessments of the company's actions on the ground. Our findings are documented in a quite detailed report or a draft recommendation. And we send it to the company always to have the comments and give them the opportunity just to provide additional information which they find relevant to the case. And of course we assess the response and we assess whether there's still grounds for exclusion of the company. And if there is, we submit a recommendation to the Ministry. So we do work on a number of sectors and companies including companies involved in the logging and clearing of tropical forests. And depending on how these operations are carried out we think that these kind of activities can actually cause quite severe environmental damage. And of course also human rights violations. And as such be inconsistent with the guidelines of the fund. I'm just going to say very few words about how we go about. In 2011 we identified all the companies in the fund which actually were involved in plantation of forest logging. We wrote to the companies, we requested information about the environmental impacts of their operations including concession maps, environmental impact assessment, HCV assessments and to what extent the concession was covered by peatlands or forests. And not only primary forests but also secondary forests. And some companies did not respond. They just simply never answered us. Some provided very limited information and referred us to their website where there was hardly any available information. And some submitted full reports and tons of documents actually with high quality on the reports. And based on this information and our own research and we do use satellite images to see what's going on in the concession. We do field visits, we use a number of local consultants. Based on these we try to find out what the reality is in the individual concession. So we of course read the companies policies and we read the CSR reports but that is not what carries weight on us. We really try to find out what's going on on the ground and see what is the damage. Are people livelihoods affected and what has the company done to alleviate impacts. So what do we assess? We assess whether forests or peatland will be converted. To what extent the licensed area overlap with areas of ecological values, important ecological values. Which consequences the conversion of forest has for endangered species and habitats and for peoples living in the area. And whether the companies measures of course are sufficient to maintain these values. And the lessons learned. Of course all companies claim to manage their concession sustainably. But what this actually entails is often not well understood we think. So companies commission HCV assessments but cannot judge the quality. And I've read a number of HCV assessments which are of really poor quality. And they contain little information on the biodiversity that will be lost. And impacts are not dealt with. We have found illegalities. We have found that companies are clearing HCV areas which they claim to be set aside. And we also find the development of deep peat here in Indonesia. And the clearing of intact forest. I was coming to the impact too so thank you for bringing that up. But I do have a follow on question to you as well. And that is that who decides what is ethical and not. Because obviously we may face situations where there are different views here. Depending on which set of stakeholders you ask. I'm not saying that the thing you mentioned should be questioned. But I'm saying that there may be a discussion whether it is the, in this case, the Norwegian parliament or another arrangement that decides what is ethical. And also in that context are these considerations related to international commitments of any kind. So I'll leave that with you for a second round. Now finally, in Vietnam investments in sustainable landscapes. This is a very large issue for your country. And I'm really curious to hear what the priorities are, what the sectors are. And what the expected returns are from your investment schemes. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. This is my honor to be here to speak about the payment of forest environment services in Vietnam. On this occasion I would like to talk and to share with you about some items first. How to recognize the importance of PFAS in terms of understanding and awareness in raising in this aspect. Second is how to initiate activity related to PFAS in Vietnam. What we are doing now. And third I would like to talk about what are the main achievement and lesson learned. What we are doing until now. And lastly we would like to say about what we are facing now. Many major challenges in PFAS in Vietnam. As you know Vietnam has high potential in PFAS, particularly with watershed management and hydro power. And we also recognize that Vietnam has become one of the first countries in Asia to initiate the PFAS scheme. And we recognize that the goal of PFAS in Vietnam is to improve the forest quantity and quantity. And increase national investment in forest sector. Reduce the state finance burden for forest protection management. And improve the social environment. We come up to the film. Which film we mentioned here. And which activity being paid for environment services. So firstly hydro power plants. Pay for services for soil protection and reduction of erosion and sedimentation of reservoir and river. As you know in Vietnam have a number of hydro power. It's about 200 hydro power. What we are consider is service user. Manage about more than 4 million hectare forest. And secondly is clean water production and supply company supply for service for regulation and maintenance of water sources for clean water production. Thirdly is industrial manufacturing factories. That use water directly from water sources must buy for services. And lastly is equal to recent company supply for landscaping and biodiversity. And now we have some achievement and lesson learned from implementation in PFAS in Vietnam. I would like to say here the government of Vietnam had made very strong commitment. Within only 10 years, 10 legal instruments like decree, decision and circular form the legal basis for PFAS implementation in Vietnam. The operation of PFAS release heavily on forest protection and development fund. I have established already about 35 forest protection and development fund in 35 provinces in whole country. And PFAS creates about 100 million US dollar and place for about 300,000 households who are managing and protecting around 4 million hectare forest. PFAS implementation has resulted in a stronger capacity for government agency and public awareness for the role of forest protection and development. Besides about achievement and good lesson learned, now we are facing some major challenges. The awareness in enforcing PFAS contract will identify as shortage of human resources and staff capacity in local government department. And we are lacking of the unauthority of enforcing compliance. PFAS payment and opportunity costs are still an important question. The street to PFAS scheme is high opportunity cost of converting forest to other land use. The transition cost of PFAS might be high because the forest owners are individual household and local community mainly living in remote area where are very limited in capacity of public services. The monitoring and evaluation system PFAS definitely needed but are not available now. However, finally I would like to say to MSI in Vietnam PFAS has a new initiative for forest sector and it creates the innovative financing mechanism for forest development. Thank you very much. This is what I would call a win-win situation. You achieve hydropower and you protect the forests. But you mentioned some complications in this process that it comes with high demands on administration, high demands on verification. The question I will park with you for the next round is what do you see as the institutional and technological developments that need to happen to make these kinds of payments, incentives, investments more effective. Ok, thank you very much for the first round. What I am going to do now is to take one shorter round where you get the opportunity to respond to my feedback question. And after that we will open the floor for questions including I think we will have possibility for online questions. We are not sure about that at this point. Ok, so coming back to Sana, I asked you whether there is much space for direct investments in land use from the public sector or we should rely entirely on the private sector for that part. Thanks for that question. No, we cannot rely entirely on the private sector. I mean, so far to date, these services that are protected by landscapes are public goods and therefore there is a need for the public sector to continue to invest in maintaining and restoring those landscapes. But there are several reasons why we can't just rely on the public sector. One is, as you know, public finance or public sector contributions or allocation of funds to environment sector is very limited. In most countries it's one or less than one percent. In some countries if you are lucky you get two percent of the public investments going into environment natural resources. So it's very limited funding. Secondly, in many countries public investment is topped up with donor financing. And many of the investments in conservation are financed through donor projects. And that is also not a reliable or sustainable solution because donor's priorities change and donor's contributions may vary over time. So you can't rely on donor contributions or donor financing for sustainable landscape management in perpetuity. So that's another reason why we need to really look into private investment in landscapes. And thirdly, it's a more fundamental issue which is that the reason that we don't recognize the importance of conservation and sustaining managing landscapes is a market failure. It's the lack of being able to quantify and to internalize the cost of the benefits and the cost of managing those landscapes. And so this needs to be addressed fundamentally. And I think there's a lot of good work happening in terms of improving the system of environmental accounts and so on. Fundamentally we need to be able to internalize the benefits as well as the cost of not managing or managing landscapes and then be able to pay for that. So for all those reasons I think public sector should continue to play a role. But I think for longer term and I think trend has been, as we know, we have a losing battle on our hands with the competing pressures on these landscapes. And therefore unless we find more sustainable and alternative sources of financing we stand to lose in this game. So instead of fighting the wave of private finance we should serve that wave. Okay, thank you very much. Sup, I came back to you and asked you how will you verify the success in your landscapes? What are the measures and how will you apply them to, shall we say, fulfill the conditions of the credits or the support that you're providing? Thank you Peter. First of all I'd like to come back to your earlier questions about the scale of the projects. Because in my earlier illustrations I mentioned about 100 kilowatt small microhydro. Actually our project is not focusing on, arranges from micro to mini hydro for renewable energy. Up to 10 megawatts. So 10 megawatts, 5, 10 megawatts is sizable projects. So we are not focusing only on small 100, 200 kilowatts but up to 10 megawatts. Because we cater not only for community grants but also for commercial window projects. Above 2 megawatts we consider commercial scale, commercial window. We are going to cater to that. We have one of the four windows that we are preparing to launch. One of the windows is to cater to the private sector commercial investment. And then how we measure the success. We have the minimum ERR, economic rate of return of 10%. So this is every investment that we do proposal intake. Our team will evaluate the ERR if it shows at least 10% that will pass the bar. So that's how we measure. And about compliance we are developing ESMS, environmental and social management systems. And we have a strong MONEF system. That's how we monitor the success of the projects. And then last questions from you is about how to keep the cost down. To make sure that we get the most bang for the buck. Our grants will be competitive grants. So we compare, we have allocated amounts for funds for each window. And we do it competitively through many, many checks. And then including the investment committee that will decide. For example for commercial window, I'll just give you an example how we want to make sure that the best project, the most cost efficient project gets funded. For the commercial window we, of course this official announcement more detail will be coming later. For commercial window we are preparing for type of funding which is actually part of public funding. Called FGF, Fiability Gap Funding. Which try, we will make projects that are economically feasible but not financially viable. Becomes financially viable so that the profit sector can come in. So we are going to have a bidding for certain projects. If bidders who can come up with the lowest FGF, the lowest grant per megawatt produce, that will be the winner. That's one scheme that we are preparing to launch in the next few months. Thank you. Thank you very much. It will be very interesting to follow. Mahilde, whose ethics are we talking about? Who decides what is ethical or not? Politicians I would say. The council's mandate has been endorsed by the parliament, Norwegian parliament actually. And it's a bit more wide range than what I said in my presentation. Because it's twofold. There are certain products which the fund should not be invested in. And this relates to companies that produce nuclear weapons, antipersonal landmines and cluster weapons. And then there is a tobacco screen too. And then it's requirements based on the company's behavior. Not on what they produce but how they behave. And this is then what I said, the companies which are causing or responsible for severe environmental damage. Serious human rights violations, gross corruptions. And then serious violations of individual rights in war and conflict. And if nothing else fits, then there is a paragraph which says other ethical norms. But it's important to note that it should be severe, serious, gross. I mean it's only the most severe cases which we assess. And then of course how is this made concrete? What is a severe environmental damage? And this has actually been a work done by the council, by the discussions with the council. And in this work we rely very much on international norms. With regard to forests and forest aggregation, we of course have looked into all the international initiatives aimed at reducing the deforestation of tropical forests. I mean the Norwegian initiative, the moratorium. So we try to align with what is accepted internationally. With regard to human rights, some of you may be familiar with the guiding, you and guiding principles on business and human rights. How it is expected business should behave. We use those. So we are not a frontrunner on what is ethical or not. We are actually quite conservative. And we try to be in line with what seems to be internationally accepted in these areas. Yeah, thanks. Thank you very much. Finally, Grain, I ask you to elaborate a little bit on the effectiveness of the financial transactions and the compliance to those recipients of funds. And if you see any needs for developing those processes. Först, I would like to say something related to how to get the win-win. Both parties. One of the parties is a service provider. For a partner like in the warehouse community or for an enterprise. And the other party is a service user. We define the height of our plan for example. But in order to get the win-win of both parties. We need the first one to win the commitment. Not only for two parties, including government. The first government has to carry out the legal framework to ensure to get the benefit, to ensure the both parties here to get the benefit. And we need commitment from the frontrunner. And for the frontrunner like in the warehouse community and hydropower plan. They have to sign contract and follow this contract. In order to reduce the transaction cost. We set up on the forest protection and development fund. This can be help. It's an equipment or tool to help to reduce the transaction cost. Because the frontrunner in Vietnam mainly as an individual home. We have more than 1 million for the owners. They are living in the remote area. And where as I talk here. They are in the area where very limited in capacity in service. 8000 for example. Therefore we have to increase capacity building for people working in. For a potential development fund. Great. I would like to open the floor. We have about 25 minutes to take questions and replies from the panel. Who would like to start? Please introduce yourself. I'm Paul Chatterton from WWF. Thanks for an excellent discussion. A question to Hilda and Sanath. And particularly Hilda. The approach of the fund at the moment is to do least harm. And I understand that. But do you see opportunities for doing greatest good? What are the chances for the fund to invest in. In positive approaches. And particularly sustainable landscapes for green growth. I understand that it's not a. That it's quite a conservative institution. So if that's not possible within the fund. What do you personally think is. Other possibilities for making this work. With other funds around the world. And Sanath perhaps you have some suggestions on this also. Thank you. I think we can take a couple of questions. Give you some time to think about the answers. We have one question here at the front. And then another one here. Hello. My name is Emi Hafeel. I am also a member of the investment committee. National investment board. I am asked to. Advise the chair on sustainable investment. So that's why I'm in this room. I've been since yesterday and I would like to ask this question for all of you. All of the panelists about regarding the palm oil. Because this is the major concern right now. The chair of investment board would like palm oil to be able as a commodity to be discussed in OPEC. But it's very difficult because it is considered as unsustainable palm oil in Indonesia. You know it's only big companies. Because requirement for sustainable palm oil plantation is a lot of money. So my question. Listening to you Hilda. So many requirements, so many conditions for you to invest. And we have so many small companies that actually work on palm oil. And how can we help them to move from unsustainable practice right now to sustainable practices. Big companies we can. We can. Because they concern about the perceptions. It's okay. They can move easily. But the smallest company, I don't think they have the capacity to do it. So how can investment bank. A financial sector can help on this. Thank you. Thank you. We have one question at the front also. No sorry. Here first bro. Thanks for that question. It goes back to the scale of the interventions and the transaction costs. Thank you. Please. I'm Sujith Rajantakoon from the Department of National Path for Land Conservation Thailand. Thank you for the panelists for the great contribution and presentation. I would like to pose the question to the Green Prosperity Projects that they are very interesting. First question is whether initiative they provide support for other countries apart from Indonesia. The second one is they. We're interesting that the investment to provide renewable energy to and to reduce the illegal mocking in the community. I would like to know how to sustain to certain ability. So to ensure that your locking will not take place later on. How long it takes for the project. For the second one, this is for the Norwegian lady. You mentioned about the private sector. Sometimes they did not have the transparent and good report as it occurs in the ground. So how your fund, the suspension fund, provide the verification to ensure that whatever the company do on the ground, especially in the country, they not create the driver of the frustration and how to ensure like verification process. And the last one for the Vietnamese minister, I would like to know that how you mentioned that the income from the hydropower investment may not be enough for the community. Wether it possible that you make the integration of the past investment as the non-carbon benefit and use rate at the more income for additional income for the community. Thank you. Okay. So we had one more final question for this round and then I'll ask the panelists to give some answers. So thanks Jess. So I have a two question. First general question for all. We know that investing in scale will form not only green returns but also for very long term benefit I think in terms of social, environmental and economic aspect. But in the context of our developing countries, so with very, very short vision. So how to find investor and who will be the investor, government, a stakeholder or everyone will be an investor for that. And the second question for the project, green broad spectrum project. So what is the outcome of the break? It's kind of like invest for green return project. Thank you. Can you please introduce yourself also? Can you please introduce yourself? The second? No, your name. I'm sorry. I'm from Vietnam University. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Shall we take it from audience left to right? So please go ahead. Sure. Okay. I think I can answer a couple of questions that were asked but I think they were directed at all of us. So I'll take my stab at it. The question from the WWF colleague about whether, if I understood the question, it was about whether funds can directly invest in sustainable landscapes. And the question was whether the Norwegian fund for instance would consider something like that. My own view is yes, I think we should be looking at developing financing instruments for private sector to invest directly in private sector mainly to directly in sustainable landscape management. And in some cases that might be setting up a fund. And in yesterday's session, there was a presentation by Lu Mandan. I don't know if some of you might have attended that session where he was explaining the conditions that the private sector would consider being necessary for investing in some conservation initiatives. And he identified several constraints that need to be addressed. So for instance, if investing in sustainable landscape management, we need to look at longer period of investment. For instance, because you won't get the returns at the same period as you would in a high investment, high return investment like a commercial crop. Or you might also want to look at the interest rates, because again, the benefits are over the longest period of time. So in order to generate profit, you need to be able to consider lower interest rates. And thirdly, because of the nature of some of the returns from its sustainable landscapes, you may need to look at variable schedules for payments. Because you won't get regular payments coming in. So these are some of the costs, or if you like the transaction costs of a fund being able to invest directly in landscapes. And there are ways to sort of handle those by creating or bundling investments into larger funds. I would say we need to look at those and it gets to the point that Peter, you raised earlier about the transaction costs. So we do need to try to minimize transaction costs of investing in landscapes. And then there are mechanisms to do that. Okay, there was a question about oil palm and whether it's sustainable or not. I mean my own view is you can't simply reject monoculture crops. And oil palm, as we heard yesterday from several speakers, is contributing substantially to employment, to economies. And therefore it is something that we need to be able to support. But the question is how do you minimize the impacts of oil palm or any other side of monoculture crop, such as oil palm. And so there are mechanisms that we should look at, for instance, to reduce the impact on biodiversity or on ecosystems as much as possible by improving the copying or plantation regimes and other measures. And if there are still impacts that you can't avoid, then look at ways to offset those impacts by creating other opportunities for these oil palm companies to invest in sustaining biodiversity in another landscape. So for instance, going back to my example of Harapan, which is surrounded by oil palms. I mean if only the province of Jambi took a decision that oil palm companies should pay for some of the biodiversity that has been lost due to conversion of land to oil palm. And that fund then supported the conservation efforts of landscapes like Harapan. You would get win-win situations. You would get oil palm being basically sustainable and creating no net loss if you like of biodiversity. And then you also get support for financing of landscapes like Harapan. That's an example of what we could do. Okay, thank you. There were a few questions that I think related to your presentation. Sure, thank you Peter. First question from Ibu Emi Hafeut. It's a pleasure meeting you, Bu, after almost 25 years since our graduate school years in medicine meeting here. Thank you, C4. My reply to may not directly reply or answer to your questions, but I would like to offer what we will do related with palm plantations, related to our GP project. It's true that in some of the landscapes that we will be working there will be, there are already existing plantations. What we plan to do is in terms of renewable energy, we are introducing, we are using the palm oil mill effluence, POMI, and convert this POMI into energy. So instead of letting the methane go up on the air, we capture the methane and then convert into energy. Our calculation is one oil plant, a palm oil plant can produce up to 3 megawatts. So that's one thing that I would like to offer. It's not answering to your questions. And then to the lady from Thailand, thank you for your questions. Whose question is the MCC funding available to other countries? The answer is yes. However, I would refer you to the MCC website. I'm here to represent MC Indonesia, but I have MCC colleagues sitting next to you. They can tell you where to look for that information. Other Asian countries that have partnership with MCC is the Philippines, Mongolia just finished, and Indonesia. And then the next question is about how to ensure that illegal logging will not happen again in the future. This is what we do. That's why I explained what three S's and one big S. The big S is the spatial certainty where we do in the handout that we give you. We have this what we call PLU, participatory land use planning. And this participatory land use planning, we actually involve the community to set the boundaries. For example, in some areas we are going to, we are part of the project activity is to establish community forest. Once we establish community forest, then that protects that area, you know, because no more than one rights can be granted to on the specific land. So that's one thing, but also before we go into the area, by the way, what we see one landscape in particular, typically covers about two to three, up to two or three sub districts and typically within one watershed area. Before we go into one district, we actually sign an agreement with the local government, with the district heads, with the provincial governor. This, we are going to invest in your area, but this is what you should do. You are committed to do this. We are going to do this. So part of their commitment is to protect, is to manage the land use, making sure that this will not happen, because otherwise if this is not protected, if the upper catchment is not protected, then the renewable energy, the run of river hydro will not sustain. So that's how we ensure this. This is a multi-prong approach to secure the investment. And the question from the gentleman from Vietnam, what is the outcome? What is the return? Who enjoys the return? In our case, in MCA Indonesia project, our motto is reducing poverty through economic growth. We are investing to that community and who enjoys the return, the people of that community. So we are using the word investment, but we are investors who don't expect to enjoy the return. Our return will be very happy if we can put more money in the pocket of the people. So they will be the beneficiary of these projects. Over to you. Okay, I try my best. The question about the positive investments of the pension fund. I think Alta somewhat answered quite well, not on the pension fund, but on the problems in general with investing in landscapes. I just want to add that the question of positive investment is an ongoing, of the pension fund is an ongoing debate in the Norwegian parliament. And there are a number of politicians and also NGOs who want to use the pension fund as a mechanism to promote renewable energy, to promote development in certain countries or emerging markets and all other kinds of investment. But there is also a counter opinion, which says that you should not use the pension fund as a means of promoting Norwegian foreign policy. So I think as the situation is now, I don't think that the time is ripe for positive investment in landscapes of the fund, but there may be other mechanisms or other funding opportunities from the Norwegian government, which may be useful to explore. Then there is the question about how to help small companies. That is really a difficult question, and I'm not sure if I'm the right person to answer this. I only have a few reflections maybe. And that is what I've seen in the work we have done, is that there appears to be, as I said, a lack of understanding of the environmental and social impacts involved often with the conversion of land. Because it's a very high impact of variations with possibly very adverse consequences. And the understanding of this seems to be low sometimes. So I think just to build capacity to try companies to have them to understand that this is really important and that this is something that their customers really will assess is important to convey to them. I mean this is not an easy operation. And I don't think it's palm oil in itself, which is a bad product, but it's the way how you produce it, which is questionable. So capacity building, it's a long shot, I don't know. Then there is your question about verification, how to ensure reliable verification processes. I think the framework for verification is quite good, but the problem is often the quality of the assessors. So there should be more stringent requirements, capacity requirements, competence requirements, to how you really assess, for instance, high conservation value areas. And what we've seen is that it appears that you also need, because I mean the biodiversity in the tropics is so different from country to country, from place to region to region, that you also need to have local science, as a scientist with local knowledge about this. So the requirements to assessor and to have a high competence is, I think it's quite crucial. Thank you. Thank you. Finally, Goyen, you had a few questions that related to your presentation. Thanks. Questions of a lady from Thailand related to how to ensure between service provider and service user in terms of payment of service, environment services. I would like to say here, it is very important if we develop one monitoring system. Especially we should develop the tool indicator and criteria of MIV monitoring, reporting and verification. It is very important, this is from my experience in Vietnam. But on this service provider can provide what they, can show what they are doing. How do they manage or protect forest? And service user can see this and ensure that the forest can provide more environment service. This is very important. Thank you. Thank you very much. We are approaching lunchtime. I am sure there are plenty of products from monocultures waiting for us. I would like to thank the panel very much. I think you and the audience you helped us to unpack some of the matters around investments. Perhaps looking at the investments in the landscape uses and products as a whole rather than looking at them piece by piece. I think there are some interesting opportunities in this. We heard about important policies and processes and initiatives in this direction. I look forward to continue this debate in another forum. Thank you very much.


Well, it is a reality. I mean, under the continuing resolution, we have had to make some of these very prudent belt tightening measures, so they're already in effect. Sequestration, of course, hasn't taken effect yet, and we hope that it won't. We still hope that Congress will act to avoid sequestration. We still hope that we'll be able to get an appropriations bill so that we can turn some of these reversible decisions around. But the impact's going to be probably felt mostly in the realm of training and maintenance, because there's going to be some work that we're not going to be able to do on ships and aircraft, and there's probably going to be some training evolutions that will either be curtailed or canceled. Now, what I want to make sure I get across is that the goal here is to preserve the readiness of our forward deployed forces. Those ships and aircraft sailors that are forward deployed right now, they're going to get everything they need to continue to do the job. That's the goal. We're also putting a heavy focus on what we call the next to deploy forces. So these are the groups that are beginning to work up now, or are working up now, to go relieve those forces that are forward deployed around the world. They're still going to get the support that they need to get ready to go. But there is a ripple effect here. If you start to cancel shipyard periods, and we are already beginning to do that and you're going to cancel depot maintenance on aircraft, it will eat into our readiness in future months and future years. So there's a ripple effect here that will take place. But largely I think for sailors right now, the impact they'll feel will be the things like travel, attendance at conferences, and perhaps some of the operating support there on their basis.


This is not me. I'm standing in for Boobley today. Unfortunately, Boobley couldn't come. It's an unlucky situation here at Fostum if you have kids. So we're trying for a number of years to get at least some self-help room here, but it's all kind of complicated. So this year Boobley said, I'm not going to look after my kid on the dirty corridors, and she stayed home and sent me. So all the errors and mistakes are mine, and the good stuff is from Boobley. We're working for CIB. This is our company. And this talk is about accessibility, mostly for developers. But I think it's a topic broad enough, and there's so much to do that I think there should be something for everybody to take away. First of all, accessibility. Who knows what that is in this context? Anyone? Stefan, I know you know it. So, well, let's check Wikipedia. In the context of software, it's mostly used for technology, or some part of a program that is there to make a computer or a technical device usable or easier usable by a person with a disability or impairment. And these days, I'm actually talking about disabilities. Well, we try to avoid that, so we rather talk about accessible software or accessible rooms or accessible restrooms or toilets or something. So that's accessibility in this context. What this is all about is that doing something that is accessible in software land these days is not particularly hard. So the problem is rather not that it's hard to do. The problem is rather that people are not aware of it, what to look for, what not to do or rather what to do. And you don't have to have any disabilities to be able to do something, to check something, to make something accessible. And this is more or less a pet talk to encourage all of you, first of all, to tell you how to do it and then encourage you to do stuff that is accessible from the get go and that people need to write bugs about and then laboriously fix it afterwards. So, yeah, why don't we do it in the first place? So first of all, at least that's true for me. I'm mostly not aware of the things. So since I am not impaired, my vision is not impaired. I don't know, my motor skills are not impaired. I tend not to notice if I do something, especially in the user interface that is not accessible. So this is awareness. I need to know what to look for. Second problem is there's always too little time.  And user experience and accessibility tend to be secondary concerns. And that's sad and it doesn't have to be like that. And third problem and that's kind of ties into this awareness issue is that development teams tend not to be particularly diverse. So again, people are not, tend not to be aware of what they are doing now. Now, but let's change that. So let's make people aware. So we all can do something. This is a little motivational image here. I really love those. So you can, all of us, we can all test for accessibility things or problems. I will talk about that a bit later, what to do. What else can we do? We can file bugs if we find something so that development becomes aware of it. We can fix quite a number of easy things directly in Glade, which is the UI editor for LibreOffice. And last but not least, of course, if we're hacking, then we can also tackle perhaps the more challenging problems that are only fixable if you touch code. Good. So that's the how to. What to do? Four simple steps to get quite a long way towards something that is usable for most people in need of accessible software. Magnifying glass. So you can, and you're usually in your desktop environment on Linux or on Windows, you can increase the font size for the user interface. Do that and check if things still look okay. Nothing is cut off. Everything is somehow, even if you need to scroll a bit or if you need to move things a bit around, but it's still that you can get to the user interface controls that nothing is hidden, nothing is cut off. There were a number of very obvious bugs, like really absolutely bleedingly obvious. For example in Calc, those sheet menus, those tapped sheet names, they were just not scaling with the font size. There was a hard limit there. So if you scaled the font above, I don't know, 15 or 16 point, it would just be not reacting anymore. So the rest of the user interface would scale, but not that one. Same story with menus. If you make your font, your user interface font large enough, suddenly the menu wouldn't fit the screen anymore. So if you want to change the font back while you're out of luck because tools, options, you can't access it anymore. There was another fix that went in to 6.0 so that you get this expander icon, so you can just click on that and get the rest of the menu still displayed.  Keyboard navigation. Keyboard navigation is a very, very, very good example for something that benefits everybody. I mean, at least it benefits me and I guess many other people who really don't like to push the mouse around all day and rely on keyboard. So making sure that LibreOffice is keyboard accessible is great for power users, is great for hackers, and is also great for people with accessibility needs. How to do that? First of all, we need to make sure that the controls have either the control itself or the control label has a mnemonic label so that you can press out and this label character and then you can get to that control. And it's also, when you do that, you get something for free which is proper screen reader output because the screen reader, if you do those labels, control labels correctly, and then we'll get to that in the next slide, but if you do that correctly, the screen reader notices, oh, this is a label for this rather complex list box here and it tells you what this list box is. And if you don't set this label properly, then the screen reader will read some weird gobbledygook internal names. But, well, again, it's something that you can test by using a screen reader if you don't want to do that. The next thing is just check if the mnemonic labels are all set. Parts of that, I think there might be another talk about that parts of that can be automated so you can have something like a regression testing script that kind of makes sure that user interface elements follow a number of constraints. But it's also something that you can just be aware of. Like, if you do UI, just be aware of it. Make sure if you put a label there, that gets the mnemonic character and then it gets this association with the actual control. So, yes, how to do that? So, it's a good example of something that is not really accessible enough. So, what should have happened is... So, oh yeah, well, this is probably because let me use a 6.0. So, now I press... If you can see that from behind, if I'm pressing Alt, I'm now getting those mnemonic characters here. So, if I now add the E, I get the second entry box down, highlighted. So, it's easy to do. Just if you're hacking UI, check if this actually works. Second thing to do, if you're doing that, make sure that this association is correctly set up. So, for that, we need Glade. We need to get it to the foreground. And for that, maybe I need to... So, this is a LibreOffice dialog that I've loaded here. It's an Impress dialog slide transition panel. And highlighted here is this a bit bigger control that has to label this one here. So, those two should be associated with each other. So, what you need to do for the label is, first of all, click this use underline that enables this feature with the mnemonic character. And then you need to associate that with the actual complex UI control. And this is the sound list. And you get some selection here from... So, if this is correctly set here, but if it wouldn't be, you can click on this edit button and you get this selection box with all the controls in that dialog. And then you pick the right one and set it there. And then it's associated in Glade. And then you save it and send a patch to Garrett. Good. And that's what I mentioned. So, there's going to be some work there to check that automatically. The thing is, you can check automatically, but you can't really fix that automatically. That's still some manual work there to fix it up. But it's a known problem and it's going to be worked on. Next one is to navigate UI between... Not only in a single dialog, but if you have the full LibreOffice UI. So, the trick is always press F6. So, now you see the menu bar is highlighted. I press it again. Now it's the first toolbar. Now the second toolbar. Third. And now I think I'm in the... Yes, now I'm in the document. So, make sure that this is a functioning cycle so that in the end you end up there at the beginning. There's a button in press when you have the slight layout panel open, you get stuck there. So, you can enter, but you can never leave. Like Hotel California, which is a nice place to be, but maybe not for a blind person who then can't get the cursor out again. So, just again, being aware of that, just play with that.  Time-wise. So, yeah, this is some F6. When you are in those toolbars or in the document, inside that, it's like inside the dialog so you can tap travel between the controls. Check if every widget accepts the keyboard focus so that you can type something there. And probably more important, if you change things, does the order of traversal still make sense? Or is the focus jumping all over the place? Okay, this is more for the hackers. So, if you're hacking a user interface, make sure you set the right flags on your controls, on your windows. So, for a control, for something that can accept keyboard input, make sure you have to stop flags that, for something that is a control container, like the outer container of a control, make sure the style of control flag is set. And for something that is a bit more complex, like, for example, a list box that itself contains controls again, like the extension manager has this rather complex list box where you have this enable-disable buttons in per entry. So, those complex controls that need tap traveling, focus traveling inside, they need this child dialog control flag. Yeah, this is the number of assorted bugs here that part of them were fixed, part of them are still there. I mentioned this problem with the Impress side panel where you can get stuck with your F6. And yeah, the last one, let's maybe skip that in favor of questions. Of course, non-textual content, like document content, should better be accessible as well. So, that means for pictures, for videos, some useful alternative text, some label that a user knows what that should be. And there's a good example, news score extension, does it wonderfully. The default that we have in writer is not so great because when you insert a picture, you're not getting prompted even. It won't be pretty easy to prompt the user when it's inserting an image anyway. Preset perhaps with a file name so that people can click it away if they don't care so much, but at least give the option there. Okay, I think we're running pretty much out of time. So, the answer to questions is not no, but it's a funny picture. So, let's open for questions quickly. Anyone? In addition to what we said, you do not have to say yes or no. The design team worked on a guideline for the sidebar to tell this expert sidebar how to travel through the sidebar, which has a lot of controls, and you don't want to press tap, tap, tap to go from first control to something on the end. It is a complex thing. Can you send me a link to that? So, those slides have annotations, they have notes, and I'm going to insert that link there, and I'm going to upload the slides after this talk to the FOSTA pages so you can find it there from the program, from the DevFoom program, and I'm going to add that link. Thank you. Yes? So, the question is, are there any good screen readers to be used for development? I think NVDA would be a very good screen reader, I suspect. But that's not, I'm not the expert here. Maybe someone from the audience can recommend something here. So, the answer was Orca on Linux. Orca, yes. And NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on Mac, which just comes with the operating system. Okay, sorry, we're out of time. Happy to answer questions outside or later. Thank you so much.


Hi, I'm James Swannick. Great to have you here. We're talking to Dean Pullman from Austin, Texas, who is an expert in yoga for men and who's a pretty cool entrepreneur. I interviewed him, I interviewed him, I think, 2015 for the James Swannick show back in the day. And so we're now doing another interview five years apart. And we've seen each other at various trade and events over the years, including the Bulletproof Conference in Pasadena, California, where I was promoting my swanese blue light blocking glasses, which I'm rocking now. Dean, how are you? Great to have you here. Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks. Thanks again for having me. It's been a long time. So I'm excited to catch up and see what you've been doing. I know you've been going through a lot of... Seems like you're living a totally different lifestyle than you were a few years ago. So I'm sure you'll tell me a little bit about it. Yeah. Tell us a little bit about you. I know I said you live in Austin, Texas, but just give us a little bit about your background and your interests and what you're doing. Yeah, sure. So I was a collegiate athlete in college and I came out and got a job that I didn't really like. And I kind of ended up having to... And then that job kind of fell apart. And I was... At the time, I had kind of a Facebook page and I had a website. And I had no other really big job prospects. And I was like, well, what do I do with this? I can go with this yoga thing or I can go and try and find another job that I don't like. And that's the story of how I started what I do. And my whole thing is yoga for men and kind of yoga for athletes and a more untraditional, more fitness-focused approach to yoga because that's what really helped me when I was in college, when I was playing lacrosse. And that's what kind of helped me understand a whole bunch of these aspects of fitness that I wasn't targeting with my other workouts and helped me get stronger in new ways and also unlocked a lot of non-physical benefits as well. So getting into understanding how breathing can help your stress and your well-being. And so it just took me on this kind of this different life path than I had envisioned for myself. And I slowly built up a brand. I've been adding videos to YouTube and writing blogs and making Facebook posts for almost eight years now. And from there, we slowly built into other things, books and DVDs and yoga mats and membership websites. And yeah. And here I am now and living, I think a pretty great life doing what I enjoy doing and having enough time to take care of myself and my family with the free time. So that's a very long, vague and introduction to myself. But yeah. I'm curious.  What's a pretty great life to you? What are the ingredients to that for you? It's different for everyone, but what are the ingredients of a great life for you? Yeah. For me, I think it's important that you have the work balance thing. But I think the term work balance has so many connotations to it in the sense that I work from nine to five and then from five o'clock on, I'm not working. But for me, that means I work when I feel like working and I can take off and I don't have to work and I don't have to grind when I don't feel that. So that's a big part of it. Another part, I really enjoy what I do when I really get into the part of work that I enjoy doing in terms of making workouts and making programs and trying to tell and explain to somebody why this could help them with their fitness. That gets me into the idea of flow. That gets me into this space where I'm completely immersed in what I'm doing, that I'm not worrying about other things. I enjoy helping people, helping people through teaching what I know. And I enjoy working out, so I get to work out a lot. And a lot of my job is just showing people how I work out. And I have a really good sense of purpose. So definitely the work-life balance, having a sense of purpose, having a place of belonging, having mental wellness, having physical wellness through getting out of good sleep, managing your stress, working out regularly. And then taking the time to work on kind of that sense of purpose and kind of grounding yourself and your situation and your life and journaling and just taking time to sit down and think about, this is where I am? Is this really what I want to be doing? Do I need to make a change? And having the kind of job that I have with this really allows me to explore all of that and to kind of make sure that I'm doing what I need to do to take care of myself while also putting out content that's helping tens of thousands of people. So I think that's kind of an unrehearsed explanation of what I meant by I'm kind of in a good place. Yeah, it's a good reminder for me actually. It's a good reminder for me in terms of writing down what's the vision? Am I going in the direction I want to go in? It's funny, isn't it? Because we've all got 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We've all got the same amount of time, yet we convince ourselves often that we don't have the time for certain things. And when you said journaling and what's my vision, am I going the right way? Even for me, I keep putting that off. I keep procrastinating often. I mean, when I do it, it's amazing. It's so good. Exactly. And I know I should do it. And even though I know I should do it, and even though I've preached that other people should do it, I don't damn do it, at least enough. And so I'm curious what your thoughts are around that because here's the thing. I had someone on the podcast recently and their advice was very similar to advice that I've heard or I've conveyed a hundred thousand times around eating organic food and getting sunlight and things like that. I suspect that we human beings, we can't already know what to do. The issue in most cases, in some cases, in many cases not, but in many cases, we already know that we should be eating organic food, eating clean water and getting sunlight and writing in a gratitude journal and having good relationships and doing what we love. We get that. Why do you feel that even though we know that, we still don't do that often? Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if we could take our own advice? And like we actually did. I mean, a couple things. So the I should be doing this. Whenever you say like, I should be doing this, there's like some sort of, you're not totally behind it, right? You're saying I should be doing this because there's some sort of pressure that makes you want to do that, but you're not really convinced on the idea as a whole. I think another part is, you want to look at how our habits formed. Like let's read Atomic Habits. Let's look at Charles Duhigg's book on habit, Power of Habit. And you think about just what you really need to do to get into those habits that you actually want to do. And then you think, oh no, I'm different from other people. I don't need to follow the steps because I have a website or I have a social media following with X thousands people and I write blogs for this. So I don't need to follow those steps. When in reality, you're wired no differently than other people. So it helps for us to also follow those kinds of steps into building habits. But what I actually gave it two days ago, someone asked me like, I forgot exactly what the question was. I think it was something along the lines of how do you motivate yourself to do more working out? And the way that I phrased it, I said, I want you to ask yourself, what are those things that you do that you finish? And then at the end of that, you're like, that's great. Why don't I do this more often? And then do that more often, make it, you know, make those things the things that you want to do more often. I think another thing that's important is to instead of looking at those things as extra, I think those things should be more the primary things. So and I'm guilty of this too. I remember a couple of weeks ago, I was, you know, I just had I just had a son about three months ago. So my whole, you know, my whole wellness routine is like, yeah, thank you. Thank you. So my whole wellness routine is like, you know, totally gone. So a couple of weeks ago, I'm like, all right, you know what? I'm kind of understanding what this life is now. And I know what my responsibilities are and how much free time I have. So I want to start getting really back into working out. And, you know, this is what really makes me happy. This is what makes me feel fulfilled. When I work out, I feel great immediately afterwards. When I'm working on consistently, I feel fulfilled personally, just, you know, kind of on an overall basis.  What do you really want to focus on? So I think if you can shift the, you know, the mindset of this is something that's just extra, that's going to help me feel better and spend a day doing that instead of a day doing, you know, the day to day things that you need to do for work. If you can shift the mindset and make that into a more non-negotiable priority, and you can understand it as more important than, you know, those other things that you're doing, then I think that's something that can be really helpful. Another thing is just keeping a journal or keeping some sort of self-tracking tool. So keeping, I like the idea of a workout log is really helpful for me, just, you know, these little notebooks, I have like 10 of these just sitting around and I either journal in them or write my workouts in them. And not only are they something that helps me kind of look back and track patterns and analyze what I'm doing, but it also is a physical representation of all the hard work that you've put into these things that are important to you. So if you can have, you know, things like that, I've used star charts before, you know, like the kindergarten charts that show if you showed up to class or not. I've actually used those to help reinforce habits and it actually works really well. My wife and I did it a couple of years ago for, I think, 2018 New Year's. But there are things like that that can be really powerful that you might look at and say, oh, I'm too good for that. And in reality, they're really helpful. So those are just a few of my thoughts on that. Yeah, nice. Yes. Obviously, you specialize in yoga for men. Tell us a little bit about that and why yoga is so important for men and women. And why you focused it on men. And then after that, I have a physical ailment, some lower back issues, which I'm going to describe to you and see whether you can prescribe some kind of exercises for me to overcome that. But first of all, tell us a little bit about your yoga for men business. Yeah. So the reason why I focus on yoga for men is because when I got started, I felt like the instructors and I felt like the classes were not geared toward my body, toward my male body. Men and women have differences in their anatomy. This isn't a political statement. This is just an anatomical science based statement. Men are less flexible in the hips. They tend to use their upper bodies more. And women are more flexible in the hips, and they use their lower body in their core more. So there are common mistakes that men will make that woman will not make as much. And there are just differences in anatomy and differences in flexibility that make it so that men and women really do practice differently, or they move differently, and they tend to have different starting points. So I'm not saying that there are no women who are flexible, but I am saying that men are less flexible and it's way more difficult for a guy to get started with yoga than it is for women, especially if he's kind of in a place like me where you spent your entire life doing strength training and doing conditioning for sports, doing sprints, doing bench press, doing weights, and you go into a yoga studio for the first time and you stretch. I've never done this before. I like the description of watching a flock of geese fly by while you're just lazily stretching before you get started. And yoga is not like that. Yoga is much more focused. So that was kind of why I decided I wanted to focus on men, was because I didn't feel that the yoga industry was doing a good job of addressing men. And as that style emerged, I kind of moved away from a more traditional flow approach to yoga and made it more about holding the postures themselves, less about moving from one movement to another as quickly as possible or in one breath, more about holding the postures for long enough that my inflexible male body could stretch and actually work into the postures. And while I was there, I was also interested in the proper technique. So instead of talking about giving maybe some life advice about what to do about a work situation or how to let go of stress, I decided to talk about, hey, your knee should be in this position if you're wondering and you should feel this in your shoulder and your neck should be lifted or your head should be raised away from your shoulders. So instead of feeling it with more of a life guidance or a spiritual guidance dialogue, I focused more on the proper technique to make sure that you're doing the postures effectively as possible, that you're targeting the right areas, that you're modifying if you need to, and that you're doing the posture in a way that works for you. So that's kind of the style that emerged. And I'm not saying that there are plenty of men who like the traditional approach to yoga, but my experience has been most men who are new to yoga might not be as interested in that spiritual side in their workout. I'm not saying that men aren't spiritual, I'm saying that men might want to separate doing isometric strengthening and mobility work from their spiritual practice. And we actually have a lot of women that enjoy that approach too. So that's kind of that. So let's dig in here to an issue that I have noticed that I've been having in just the context. I'm a 45 year old man who has been lifting weights mostly for 10 years, maybe 12 years. So going to the gym, bench press, back, vanity muscles, some biceps, triceps, shoulders, sometimes, but not often, legs. I've gone through phases before where I've incorporated two sessions a week of legs into it, very little core, focusing on core work. Over time, I've done lots of F 45, kind of like circuit training stuff. I've done some yoga stuff, run several half marathons. I'm active, like I'm moving and sweating at least five, six times a week and have done for 12 years. So being sedentary is not my issue. Having said that, I have noticed the last year, well, the last year I've experienced considerable lower back pain. And you notice now that you and I both standing, we're doing this interview as we're standing, I'm standing. My lower back pain will tend to happen mostly after I wake up in the morning and I'll come and I'll stand at my desk and all of a sudden just the simple act of standing will cause me lower back pain. Likewise, whenever I drive a car for anything longer than 20 minutes, I have lower back pain, like just crippling back pain. So I seem to be doing everything right in the sense that I'm moving, I'm lifting, I'm running, I'm doing some stretching, I'm active, but I still get this lower back pain. Knowing what you know, is there anything there from based on what I shared that could be a possible cause of that and what could be a possible solution? Oh, yeah, for sure. So back pain is a function of four things. It's related to spinal mobility, to core strength, to hip mobility and hip strength. So those four things are the most important when it comes to your overall back health. The other big factor in that is how often are you moving throughout the day. So are you sitting for four, six, eight hours? Or are you getting up and moving every 30 minutes? So what I found is that generally, if you can start working on your core strength, working on your hip mobility, working on stretching and strengthening the muscles that connect to your spine for 30 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes, three times per week, then that back pain can go away in as little as two or three weeks, or it can start to, you'll notice significant improvements in two to three weeks. And if you're doing the right exercises, if you're doing hip mobility, if you're doing core strengthening, and you're really, really taking time and effort to focus on the proper technique and the proper muscle engagement, then you can notice an immediate improvement. You can do a, you know, you could do a 40 or 30 minute yoga session and afterwards you're like, Oh, wow, this feels a lot better. So my recommendation would be to start working on that hip mobility, working on core strength, working on your spinal mobility and kind of doing those movements that your body needs that you're probably not getting from, you know, from weight training or from running. I also believe that, you know, just living in a sedentary world, it's not enough for us to go out and exercise and then not do any sort of mobility to counter, you know, what we, what we, what we're not doing. So we need to do mobility work on really on a daily basis to counter, you know, the relative inactivity of our lifestyles.  And a lot of people think that it's just stretching. You know, I've had so many people come to me and say, I stretch my hamstrings all the time, but they still hurt and my back still hurts and like stop stretching your hamstrings then because back pain isn't just about stretching. It's also about building strength. And personally, I've actually found better results from building strength with mobility than just doing, you know, passive stretching on its own. So, and that's what I try to focus on with Manful Yoga is combining that strength and flexibility into a more functional, more useful kind of aspect of fitness. Yeah. Thank you so much for that suggestion. In actual fact, I'm actually doing the very thing that you suggested, which is great. I'm on the right track. So what I ended up doing, what I suspect I was doing wrong to try to combat the problem for a couple of months was simply stretching. Stretching hamstrings. I actually hired a guy and I said, all I want you to do is just stretch me. Let's stretch the hamstring. Let's stretch the glutes. Let's stretch, stretch, stretch. And I did that and it felt good in the moment that I was doing it. I mean, it was challenging to be stretched like that quite frankly. But you know, in the hour or two afterwards, I was like, Oh, that actually feels good. Mentally, I feel really good on that. But I noticed that the pain didn't really go away. But then since we switched to doing core strength exercises and building strength and doing lunges, carrying dumbbells and building up strength. And in particular, I think focusing on the glutes of my glutes, I've noticed the pain has subsided dramatically.  But really, my glutes weren't firing at all.  But then just after two weeks of actually focusing on the glutes and actually just even just like stretching them or even focusing on my mind that my glutes are there and kind of like tensing them or what's the word I'm looking for? Just kind of like building that muscle engagement, that muscle lactation, gauging them. Thank you. Yeah, engaging them. All of a sudden, my pain has started to subside. In conjunction with, I've started swimming for about 30 minutes, four or five times a week in a 25 meter pool. And I'm just doing freestyle and some whatever. And I don't know how that's helped. But mentally, whether it's a placebo effect or whatever, like just leaning out, putting my arms out and kicking my legs, I'm sure it's working my core, it's stretching my muscles, not to mention the power of the breath. Like 30 minutes of like coming up and breathing and going back down and holding your breath and breathing has been quite a meditative experience also. There's a lot of core there. I'm actually glad you brought up the muscle activation thing. The other point I was going to say is there's a disconnect between the muscles that you're supposed to be using and the workouts that you're doing that supposedly target those muscles.  So another thing that I really focus on is just like you were doing exercises in a way, doing yoga postures in a way that helps you build that muscle activation and then doing it in a way that carries over into your movement throughout the day.  So that is another huge factor. So even if you're working out and you're targeting all these muscle groups, you think most people just don't have those muscles firing. And it's because of that sedentary lifestyle.  You're training your core to turn off. And when you stand up, that doesn't go away. Your body remembers that.  I don't know. Just use your quads. And that's kind of like what your body is doing. So that is a huge, huge part of it. I'm sure you don't want to know this, but I'm engaging my glute muscles as we're doing this interview right now. I'm actually just doing little pulses just to remind my body that my glutes are there. I could see it in your face. It's the glute engagement face. I love that. Just tell us where our listeners and viewers can actually read up more about you and what you do in the yoga for men. Just give us those URLs and then we'll continue on with a couple more questions. But I just want to make sure that our listeners can find you effectively. Yeah, sure. So my website is manfulyoga.com. We've got a lot of resources on there. I have a free seven-day intro. If you want to go to manfulyoga.com slash intro. And then we actually set up a COVID page because we know it's like a weird time right now. So we set up a COVID page with 20 workouts from five programs at manfulyoga.com slash free. So you want to kind of learn about my workout approach and get started. That's a cool place to do it. I'm wearing my Swanee's blue light blocking glasses. I'm curious as to when and how you might wear blue light blocking glasses and how you incorporate those into either your work or your sleep routine. Yeah, so I actually have my blue white blocking glasses by my TV. So if I'm watching TV later and I feel like I'm really tired and this light is just too much right now, then I will wear the glasses if I'm watching TV. If I am, I'm rarely on the computer after dark. So it's still not dark yet. This doesn't count. So I'm really on the computer after dark. So I don't have to, you know, I don't really worry about it that much. So, and I'll use, you know, if I do start to feel that strain, I have flux turned on. So I'm using that on all of my screens.  So your phone is like a, you know, you just don't want to look at it, which makes it difficult if you're trying to do social media. So I had to turn it off. But yeah, for me, I wear my blue light blockers at night. If I'm watching TV, or if I really have to be on the computer, then then I'll wear them for that. Yeah, great. And what some effect does that have on you when you do wear your blue light blockers? I just noticed that my eyes feel a lot less strained.  So me using the glasses in those situations is a way for me to kind of more listen to my body and allow it to relax more. So I find that I am able to relax and get to sleep sooner and definitely get improved sleep if more so just falling to sleep. I think that's the biggest effect. If I'm watching TV, if I'm doing something at night that is in the light and wearing those glasses, then it's helpful. Yeah, nice one. And if you're listening to this and you're curious about the Swanis blue light blocking glasses and you haven't already got a pair, then you can go to swanis.com slash James and use the code James at checkout for the friends and family discount. And if you're listening or watching to this in the US, you can always text the word swanis to the number 44222. If you're listening to this outside of the US, don't bother doing that. It won't work. But if you are in the US, you can text the word swanis to the number 44222 and I'll send you a link. Dean, you have a four month old son? Is that right? Three month old, four month old? He's three and yeah, three and some change right now. So as a father then, how has that disrupted your exercise and health regimen? And what advice would you give yourself and then give to someone else who has distractions, whether it's a child or family member or something else? How do you overcome that? Yeah, so I think I was prepared for having less free time. What I was not prepared for was just the completely unstructured schedule of having a child. It's not like you can say, oh, I'm going to work from eight to four and then I'll baby watch from four to eight. That's just not how it works. It's kind of like it's just on demand whenever. So some things that I've done to make sure that I can continue to work out. Number one, kind of my wife and I just had a conversation and I told her, hey, I know that working's out important to you. I'll watch Declan when you need to work out. Just let me know and I'll make sure that I'll be available so that I can watch him for you. And kind of the same thing with her. I tell her, hey, I really want to work out today. Do you need me to do anything like right now or can I do something in the next 20 minutes before I work out? And she is a pretty understanding and she knows that I'm working out. She won't get me unless it's really important. So part of that was just having a conversation with the family and making sure that we're on the same page there and helping us support each other's goals of being fit. Another part of that is I make all of my workouts as accessible as possible, which means I have all of my workout equipment at my home. It's in my office. I have all the weights I need. I have the bands. I have the foam rollers. I have the kettlebells. I have all the stuff that I need right here. And that has been a huge because I'm able to get in a workout in the time that it would take me to go to a gym and get back. So having all that equipment here and then also writing out your workout beforehand or knowing kind of what you're going to do so that you don't have to spend energy or time on coming up with the workout. I think that's really important. And then as far as the workout logistics themselves, the goal is consistency and the goal is just getting in the necessary reps and exercises to stimulate growth. It's not about killing myself with every workout. It's not about listening to the Rocky soundtrack every time and working out like I'm Rocky training to fight Drago. It's just doing the exercises that are on your checklist and then getting through them and doing them to the best of your ability.  And that makes it a lot more manageable in terms of consistency and showing up and doing it regularly. Yeah, wonderful. I've actually haven't lifted a what haven't done a chest exercise or a bicep curl now in almost a month, which is the longest I've gone in 12 years without actually lifting something. And that has coincided with me feeling pretty terrific, quite frankly. So I'm not going to stop forever, but I have noticed that in those four weeks since I started stretching and doing core and swimming, my bodies, it kind of feels like, oh, it's kind of like, oh, thank you. Thanks for the relaxation work. So I'm kind of suspecting that maybe my body was ready for an extended break. I don't know if that's just a story I'm creating in my mind, whether there's any validity to that. But I think your body goes through phases. I think it goes through phases, like sometimes you really want to strengthen and sometimes you really want to work on mobility. And sometimes you just don't want to do anything. And I think it's okay to go with it. Yeah. Yeah, it's been a little I've had a lot of resistance about going with the it, which is stopping doing the chest and upper body shoulder muscles, because now you lose a little bit of size. And then all of a sudden you put your shirts on, which is going to fit nicely and aesthetically. And for vanity purposes, you go, Oh, good, I look strong. And, you know, I'm a strong man. And then all of a sudden you see it kind of, and the biceps don't pop as much out of the shirt. And you're like, Oh, she's just I'm shrinking, shrinking away here. But what I've lost maybe in us in aesthetics, at least in my own ego and vanity, I've made up for in terms of I have noticed that my energy levels have increased. And I always used to think that if I if I just, you know, lifted heavy in the gym, that would be great to create energy, which it did. But since I stopped doing that and just been swimming and stretching and doing core, I've noticed I've got more energy, physical energy at the end of the day. The example of that is, I have a two level home. And there's a set of stairs that come up and then go up again.  When I was lifting weights, towards the end of the day, I would just kind of like walk walk up the stairs, not necessarily slowly or labor, I just walk up. But since I've stopped doing the the upper body stuff and started swimming and stretching and working on core, I'm surprised at how often I run up the stairs now. And that I've noticed that it's not a placebo thing like I've actually noticed I'm now like at times I'm like, you know, like skipping three, three stairs at a time and running up the stairs and that didn't happen when I was lifting weights. So anyway, interesting. Yeah, you've got that extra energy. It sounds like I don't know to me, it sounds like you've got you know, you're working up so long that you your body is just trying to recover trying to recover trying to recover.  That was kind of what happened with me. And when I was doing yoga, because I'd been lifting and training for so long.  And eventually I started to like really lose a lot of muscle mass. And I looked in the mirror one day and I was like, what am I doing? And then I started like lifting again. But for a while, I'm like, I feel really good. I still look toned. I think I still look pretty good. So, you know, I kept it up. And, and then I then I got to a point I looked in the mirror one day and I was like, Oh, wow. Yeah, we got it. We got to get the weights going again. Yeah. Well, I'm enjoying the break that I'm giving myself at the moment. And like I said, I'll put I'll bring it back in. But I, I don't actually think I'm going to go back to the way I was doing. And I think now I'm going to probably going to just incorporate pushing weights and lifting weights more as a, you know, as part of an overall, you know, a routine that involves swimming and stretching versus just going to the gym and lifting weights. And I think I'm confident that'll work considerably better for me. But like anything in the bracket, I'm going to measure it. I'll keep testing it. Maybe I'm just going through a phase and you know, wake up in a week and I'm like, not ready to hit the gym and lift weights again.  And I throw away this who knows like, yeah, but there just there's no blanket statement for everyone. And certainly people got men and women go through different phases as well. I'm just this time listening to my body versus overriding my body with what I think is best. So yes. Dean, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate that. Just give us that website one more time. Sure, manflowyoga.com, manfllwyoga.com. Awesome. Dean, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your words of expertise and your guidance. And great to see you again. And hopefully I'll see you sooner rather than later. Yeah, you too, James.