Okay, hello and welcome everybody to today's IID debates event where we are talking all about implementing biocredits and making the market work for nature and for people. Today's IID debates event is co-hosted with UNDP, we're very delighted to be co-hosting this one. My name's Juliette, I am the events officer IID and I'm going to be kind of behind the screens today providing some technical support. So thank you all so much for joining us, we are really excited about the speakers that we have and about the discussion that we've got planned ahead of us. We've got 75 minutes together so I hope you're sitting comfortably, I hope you've got a tea, coffee or some kind of refreshment ready to go. I'm now really happy to hand over to Paul Steele who is the Chief Economist in IID's Ship and Sustainable Market Group and our moderator for today's discussion. Paul over to you please. Right well thanks Juliette and welcome everybody to what we hope is going to be really exciting discussion about what's an important emerging instrument in the panoply of incentives to address nature finance. As Juliette said we've got 75 minutes an hour and a quarter so please we hope you can stay till the end and we'll be having some time for questions from yourselves and discussion. Also as Juliette said and I think some people already starting to do that please introduce yourselves in the chat so we know all about our participants joining us and hopefully from all over the world. I just see we've had some countries come up from Indonesia, there's a participant so that's great. Just from me to say that my colleague will be introducing the concept of biocredits in a moment the way we see them is very different from offsets which you may be more familiar with and my colleague Anna from IID will be explaining what that means. We have a great set of panellists we've got Anna from IID my colleague then we've got three biodiversity credit developers Mariana from Tarasso in Latin America, Alex who works operation with a number of emerging projects all over the world and then Simon from Value Nature who's working in South Africa and elsewhere on biocredits so a really interesting set of biocredit developers then we have two discussants one Pauline from Ecotrust Uganda who's been working with carbon credits for some time and will share her experience of really getting the money down to where it matters on the front line of people managing biodiversity and how biocredits can learn from the carbon credit experience and then Maxime from UNDP who's a senior nature economist from UNDP who will be sharing UNDP's interest in this emerging instrument so without further ado I'm going to invite Anna to pick off with a short seven-minute presentation just introducing the concept and some of the key issues Anna please. Okay perfect I can see that I hope everyone can as well yeah yeah um yeah so as Paul said my name's Anna Dupre and I'm a researcher at IID and before we get to the panels I'm just going to run through um broad overview of biocredits and how they can create incentives for inclusive biodiversity conservation. Next slide please Julia. Okay so starting first with what are biocredits they're a coherent unit of measurement to track conservation actions and outcomes that can be bought and sold to invest in biodiversity improvements and as Paul mentioned there's an important distinction between offsets and biocredits where offsets are tracking damage that's been displaced biocredits track a positive gain in biodiversity. Next slide please Julia. So over through looking through different market-based conservation schemes we found some challenges that do apply to biocredits so first there's a stigma with for-profit investment there's also a mixed record of offsets like we've both mentioned um there's also an immature market for conservation schemes which goes hand in hand with the lack of regulatory um and policy framework and then lastly there's extensive excessive transaction costs as well as it's quite costly to measure biodiversity um luckily these costs are going down with improvements in technology which we'll get to later and our panelists will also touch on. Next slide please Julia. Perfect so um through analyzing biocredit schemes um research at IID has found that if there's four key components for a successful biocredit scheme the first is that they're simple transparent and cost effective and then it's also key that parallel to a biocredit scheme there's enabling policy from the government it also requires market engagement to attract buyers and generate sales and then lastly but not least um it's key that the biocredit scheme has inclusive and fair benefits for all parties. So in terms of looking at different biocredit schemes they have a lot of differences but we've identified three ways that they differ and we're going to use those as a point of entry for analysis today so the first is um they differ in the way that they identify and measure biodiversity they also can be different in how they set prices and they're different in how they share finance with local households and also sometimes how they define the local household or what really is a local level. So starting with identifying and measuring biodiversity there's kind of two broad ways to do this it can be based on species abundance or it can be an area-based measurement using key habitats. As mentioned there's new tools emerging for measuring biodiversity like remote sensing and biocoustics which um our panelists will get to more today and then in measuring biodiversity it's key to look at how we're valuing nature um if it can be expanded on from just human perspective it's hard to get from the untangible value of nature to price tag and that leads us to the next point of entry which is setting prices so most biocredit schemes are similar in the way that they have a baseline price to cover the cost of management and transaction costs the price can differ depending on if there's a need for return to investors or not and there's usually no price ceiling so they use the baseline price and then they allow the market to raise the price and then lastly they differ on how they share finance or benefits with local households so providing inclusive and fair benefits to those maintaining biodiversity the landowners or those living in biodiversity hotspots is key to the longevity and success of a biocredit scheme here there's potentially a role for a third party as we'll see with operation um well I see they use plan vivo as them a third party kind of regular regulatory body and they're committed to 80 percent of funds to local households so I'll leave it at that for now and I'll pass it back to Paul and to our panelists thank you great thanks Anna and I think a few people were having issues in the chat with sharing their messages with everybody you should be able to go to the drop-down menu and click on it to everyone if you can try and do that maybe Julia can put some explanation in how to do that in the chat okay well thanks for that overview now we turn to our three practitioners so starting off with Mariana Saramiento from Tarasso in Colombia and she'll present on how they have been developing their work and they've been going for some years now so they're in if you like the most advanced of the different developers that we're going to hear from today so Mariana if you want to share your slides sure well first of all good morning everybody for me and good afternoon and good evening for some for others um and it's and it's a pleasure to be here um as Paul mentioned I'm the CEO of Terrasos Terrasos is a Colombian company that mostly um has focused on helping the private sector deploy its investment in conservation and restoration projects um so a lot of our background comes from from that field so just give me one second well so today I'm just going to talk briefly about what we're doing and how we're doing it um again we are so so the work some of the work that Terrasos has been doing is based on developing habitat banks and within those habitat banks we we create biodiversity credits um at the moment our track record which involves more than 2,000 managed hectares um under this scheme um we've we've contracted over four million dollars in biodiversity credits with the private sector for offset implementation um so that's within the regulatory market and now I know we're moving and we are piloting the voluntary market to see to see what that would look like so I'm going to share a little bit about what we've been doing on that voluntary market front so just um just to get a sense for you guys to get a sense of where we're working on right now we have five different habitat banks in three different provinces in Colombia um and at this point it adds up to 2,000 hectares under management um we are hoping to reach in the next year uh 5,000 hectares under management and on the right you can see some of our key partners um but two two of them have been really catalytic in this process the IDP lab um they were they are our first investors they invested a million dollars in the in our pilot projects um you know they are in a way the the private sector's laboratory within the IDP and it's been you know and it's been and it's been amazing because with them we've been able to demonstrate that the business model does work that there's appetite for the for the product and then with p4f which is a UK government um funded program we've been working on scaling habitat banks and they're the ones that have helped us develop this voluntary biodiversity credit protocol um so that's so and then those that you see at the bottom are some of our current clients so just a little bit of background and and I and I have to talk about habitat banks because for us we don't necessarily conceive biodiversity credit without habitat banks um habitat banks are the area that is managed for conservation but we're we're able to aggregate um multiple investments from different in this case individuals or companies into one area and the difference between a habitat bank and other types of projects conservation projects is that here we have early investment land is insured for at least 30 years it's a result-based payment um system and we have 30 years of legal and financial assurances that make it uh you know as permanent as as as we possibly can in the case of Colombia um so now so again a lot of so our track record has been in the regulatory market within Colombia we're now exploring this voluntary market and for that we created a protocol and we worked on it on a pilot right so within our regulatory market product you know that it's it's one hectare it's equal to one credit in our voluntary biodiversity credit um we're talking about about 10 squared meters um why why and how did we reach that um mostly thinking about willingness to pay how much are individuals or people willing to pay for one specific unit of something and we got to that based on um some what's what's out there um and and then so not just the spatial component but also what types of activities are there um also understanding that a credit and a conservation project not only needs a technical approach but also financial and legal assurances for for it to work um we're talking that no project that is structured for less than 20 years would be able to deliver uh into issue biodiversity credits um and and each project needs to have its own monitoring protocol um we developed this by working you know with a working group where the IDB P4S colleagues that that have been working in registries um and also carbon credit carbon credit certifiers um and and companies that are managing marketplaces for by the very before carbon offsets so a lot of what we've come up with is the result also about of thinking you know what has worked in the carbon space what hasn't worked um or what we think needs to be improved but also a lot of the lessons learned and a lot of um where we're coming from is based on the decades of experience that the united states and the regulatory markets have in bio credits um there's a lot of experience there that we that we can't ignore so we we we decided on certain principles for this protocol traceability continuity and permanence technical wriggle rigor applicability and by that we meant you know simple is better especially in an immature setting um additionality and complementarity um meaning all projects need to demonstrate additional contributions uh and complementarity all projects need to complement environmental planning uh initiatives sorry mariana just a couple more minutes yes um so how does that how does um our metric work or what are the main components of it one is um um so the number of credits that each project can issue is based on um how sort of how how the project or you know how the landscape is um how the ecosystem where the project is taken place is classified under the iucn red list of ecosystem right now more than a hundred countries have adopt have adopted this this um list or this methodology to the number of hectares and the number of hectares on their conservation activities or restoration activities um and the amount of time you know the duration of the project as i said you know you can only issue credits if you have a project that is there for at least 20 years and then the more years you know if it's 30 years then it'll be the project will be able to issue more credits than than the other um then and then credits are issued you know based on management milestones but also ecological milestones and on the right this is just an example credit will be released as you're able to fulfill certain milestones which each project will establish within its management plan um so that all credit 100 percent of the credits are released in the first 10 years of the project but no project releases its credits right at the beginning um so if i have let's say a project which is worth which can potentially which can issue 100 credits um in the first two years for example it will only be able to leak to really it will only be able to sell 20 percent of the credits if it has met those milestones and so on if you can wrap up now mariana please and then finally in relation to implementation costs then you know what's the price of the credit and whatnot so for us the value of each credit is the net present value of all the cost of all the cost over that 30 year period um and and the the reason why we're doing that is because one credit is equal to 10 square meters right and and that credit is only sold once so we need to make sure that that credit that the cost of the credit includes all the cost of management activities and one thing that we've done is that um for every cell a percentage of that cell bone goes into a wasting account um so that wasting account begins to fill up so that once we've finished selling all the credits we have sufficient funds to manage for the long term um so that's so that's in a nutshell what we're doing sorry if i ran a little fast um it's the first time for me explaining the explaining the the basics of the credit in english um so so i ramble there for a little bit um and just this uh this is the result of our pilot i just want to mention that so far we've been able to sell um a little bit over 60 voluntary biodiversity credits um without doing a whole lot um at least not in the on the front end in the marketing end so we know that there's appetite for that we know that there's appetite for this and we know that it just needs to be improved and that we need to work collectively in it in order to be able to create high integrity biodiversity credits um so that we get the conservation results that we want great thanks Marian excellent presentation and apologies to rush you but um no no no my bad and i i know you're uh it's not your first language so we really appreciate um you presenting in english so thank you for that really fascinating and i'm sure there'll be lots of comments and questions okay so without further ado we hand over to the next developer uh operation wanna see uh uh alex who's the uh chief operating officer and uh and will present their work alex you have seven minutes okay thank you very much indeed um i'll get straight into it because um i appreciate that time uh is a little bit tight um and so really for us the the biodiversity credit problem um was all about measurement so the lack of the equivalent of a carbon dioxide molecule in biodiversity means it's very hard for private sector to invest in biodiversity because if you can't measure something you can't securitize it then how do you realistically pay for it and so we took inspiration from the retail price index um which is if you're comparing inflation in china and england then you look at a basket of goods and what people are buying in china isn't the same as what they buy in england but you can still you can still compare those two locations because those are the things that are important in those places so why don't you do the same thing with biodiversity and that's sort of where that the concept came where you can um develop a basket of a minimum of five metrics that reflect the conservation objective so the relevant eco region of an area that you want to protect or uplift the biodiversity within and that's the basis on which you can then develop biodiversity credit so um one biodiversity credit and being defined as a one percent uplift um or avoided loss per hectare in the median value of the basket of metrics um the median being important because if you go for an average value then you might have one metric which plugs the others um or particularly drags them down so it's important to use a median um and what that does then is it potentially unlocks the private sector investment because it it means that um a development bank for example can quantify biodiversity benefit um in terms of for example a 10 percent improvement um in biodiversity across your basket of metrics which are relevant to that to that particular eco region um and we know that there's this big sort of funding shortfall somewhere around about 800 billion difference in terms of what was invested from the private sector for carbon um on in the climate side versus what was invested on the biodiversity side in 2021 and that's from the CPIC report largely seen as due to due to a lack of measurability for biodiversity and so that's sort of where the biodiversity um credit concept has come from um so the Waterfield Trust um a charity developed this working group um where as you imagine any kind of working group where you're trying to define how to measure biodiversity was was complex and a bit um arky at points so um we had um groups from the you know financial institutions um corporates such as GSK um consultancies um and academics as well and when you get those sort of people in a room then yeah it can be a long and tricky process but but ultimately agreement was reached um through this working group about how to measure biodiversity improvements and avoided loss and um similarly to um what Mariana was saying it was seen as very important that we could piggyback on what the voluntary carbon market had already achieved because that's going to be recognizable familiar um and sort of seen as less risky to to the financial institutions and so those same concepts like their additional leakage etc um are all there and and so that methodology um has then been finished open source and plan vivos um are using it to turn it into a standard which they're currently in the advanced stages of and expecting to have projects that are new projects to be submitted from 2023 onwards so they're expecting to have that standard um coming out by the end of the year um so broadly speaking we're that there's three ways that they're talking about it being able to issue credits um ex ante uplift credits um which is where we would be pairing you take a site like a uh a lowland farm or something like that where you're wanting to uplift the biodiversity and for that you would then need to um compare to a site where there's a similar management practice to what you're proposing um for a given and known period of time and you can then predict forward the likely biodiversity uplift so that's that's one way of potentially issuing credits ex ante um you've then got things like ex post biodiversity uplift where you're measuring your your biodiversity across your basket of metrics and then remeasuring in a let's say every five years actually credits on the back of your percentage uplift and then there's also ex post avoided loss so that's a key a way of potentially getting funding into sites where there's already very high biodiversity value but there's an imminent threat to that biodiversity um and so by that you then need to pair your site or have a paired development site um where you've got a site that is effectively sort of what your site is likely to become if you don't intervene if you don't um sort of underdare your project and so then you can compare those two um locations in order to generate the um to generate the loss avoidance for biodiversity so those are the sort of the the basic principles of it and if we look at some examples of how you what your basket of metrics might look like i'm going to give an example of lowland english farms and indonesian coves because they're completely different eco regions if you're doing sort of lowland english farms being rewilded you might look at things like the off the shelf deffer wide diversity metric very much habitat based um look at things like invertebrates um species riches and abundance in the soil um as well as riches and abundance the totes invertebrates um because if you can combine those two things and also give rankings and importance to the to the species that you're finding so you can use things like i use the end rankings as well um then things like breeding birds too so you've got very different um potential metrics in there so if you were looking at coral reef where you might look at coal cover using video transects um edna um video transects for um herbivorous fish um and so on so you can then and get the back of metrics but the point being that they're completely different but that they are relevant and important for the eco regions that you're wanting to protect in each of those cases in terms of actually getting credits and of course there's an application process analogous to the the voluntary carbon market um where a project developer would need to submit an application where there'd be an initial basic review from plan vivo um or your credit verification agency um they can then look at the appropriateness of your back of metrics they can look at the um the suitability of your reference sites um and provide some feedback on that and if that's accepted you can then go on to the full application process but um at least two independent experts in the eco region that you're wanting to to work in that can then um sort of feedback to you in order to sort of get that get a full application process done um and so then the process of actually getting the credits where they need to do the measurement and that can be even quite labor intensive of course but producing a biodiversity measurement report so that's where you're measuring your biodiversity across your basket of metrics at least five taxa taxa groups um at time zero plus in your paired development or reference sites as well um and it's really important there we're thinking about how verifiable your data is uh and say there's the sort of restrictions and guidance as well and something for the verification bodies to think about um is you know for example looking at sample when they're doing audits looking at samples um of any digital data um if you've got photographic evidence um if you've got edna then there'll be lab reports so there's various ways of actually making sure the data you're collecting as much as possible is going to be verifiable so it stands up to reason and reduces risk for anybody that was and producing or funding projects like this and so how how does it how do how can we actually get money in to biodiversity through this because ultimately that's what this is about um so i've just sort of put a project example here um and um much as sort of mariana mentioned then you've effectively got your um you've got your sort of your your costs um and you've potentially got your revenues as well so um if we're doing this is an example for rewilding in the UK where your your revenue can be generated through biodiversity credits and through carbon credits because you're going to have uplift in both you know but you've also got things like ELM payments as well for rewilding and so that can produce you know produce some revenues for a project which you then will offset as with any business model um against your costs over a period of time so that might be payments to stakeholders might be payments to landowners and for change of land use then you've got management input management costs protection services um the legal cost administration those sort of transaction costs as well as your verification and issuance costs to a um to a credit agency and so as with any business proposal you have your revenue you have your costs um and ultimately that makes it something that is potentially investable so it might be that you have a um a private sector organization that wishes to have a net net your positive target met by certain year and this is a way for them quantifying that impact of quantifying sorry that's um that biodiversity uplift but it may also be that you have a straightforward investment opportunity um and because we know that there's a lot of um organizations that are interested in green finance and investment opportunities and so with something like this then there that that opportunity um is potentially there because the price that you sell your credits out of course will determine the revenue generated from the project so um it's a means of a sort of unlocking that those financial flows that's what we're really interested in um we've um had sort of the first batch of carbon credits now um being purchased by major international banks on a large project that we're running um the fact Tim reason he's not here Dr St Cole is that he was invited to a meeting with the Honduran Minister for Forestry all about how um we best ensure that that private sector financing um you know for the long-term basis um is getting to the right people on the ground um in Honduras and other countries as well so um so we have really exciting opportunities there uh so that's um all from me um I hope I wasn't too long Paul oh great Alex um I think you slightly overran but like Marianna you had a lot to say and again I'm sure there'll be lots of comments and questions so uh our final developer is Simon Morgan from Value Nature uh so over to you Simon you have seven minutes thanks Alex if you could stop your screen share then I can thank you Hi everyone thanks um for this opportunity Paul and um everyone from IRED it's great to be here I'm going to tell you a little bit about Value Nature's biodiversity tokens which are non-fungible tokens and developed with proofs and validations on a distributed ledger technology like the blockchain um and these tokens that we developed represent the protection of one hectare for 10 years and so that's an important departure from some of the other credits that you've been hearing about um which are focused in on the gains of biodiversity that are made um what we're trying to do is drive um biodiversity finance into the protection of biodiversity and rather than the measurement of gains which is kind of an output from the project um from the tokens themselves so we do this um by a scoring system for for the tokens to understand what the biodiversity is on the ground and so we've divided that up into the flora and the fauna and what we're interested in is for a project site what is the status of the biodiversity so we compare that to a nearby um reference site um I see in one of the questions um that have come up um you know how do we address changes in biodiversity um with fluctuations of seasons and and rainfall rainfall and things like that from one year to the next but by comparing it to a reference site nearby that's going under under the same kind of climatic envelope we'll be able to account for that um and to be able to measure those changes accordingly so once we've got a score of the biodiversity in an area which we use earth observation mechanisms for the flora and for the fauna we're using bio acoustics and camera traps and so kind of ground metrics um out in the field and the tools that we're using are to try and reduce the need for um experts um to be out in the field but rather using local ecologists and field ranges and the likes you can deploy camera traps or bio acoustic devices um to listen and we'll to see across the landscape and see what's happening and then as I said from a flora perspective using earth observations um so that we don't again have that bottleneck which occurs when you're trying to get professionals um out into the field which we see happening in the carbon market for example and so we try to step back and rather use technology um answer those questions for us so once we've got the the biodiversity score which is essentially the status um from one to the next um we have waiting factors which we put against each of those so for the flora we're using carbon um and we've incorporated carbon because we understand the value of carbon in our systems and but we also recognize that biodiversity really underpins a lot of the carbon that's that that exists out there um but through the current carbon mechanisms there's no real way to value the standing stocks of carbon that exist out there and so again not looking at the additionality component but rather looking at the standing stocks um of carbon so we've included that as a waiting factor on the flora side and then the IUCN has released the star metric which assesses globally has assessed the area of habitat available for endangered and threatened species and have come up with a metric for that so we'll use that to to weight our uh wildlife status our wildlife score on there so these um scores are then coupled together and are hashed on the hedera hash graph um which is a zero carbon footprint um but what's important about using um this type of of technology is that we are able to create the validations and proofs through our system as that data is getting hashed um which will really speed up the validation and the third party kind of assessments of of the data on there as well as creating a sense of trust transparency and traceability by using blockchain technologies again this is something that we've seen as a bottleneck in the carbon voluntary markets and and we're trying to get around and we feel that the um the tokenization of the data will will help us with that so once we've created the the token um investors are able to purchase the token and from a pricing perspective we are costing it out on the protection of those habitats in their various areas we recognize that to protect one hectare of biodiversity in the drc for example um comes at a very different cost than say a similar hectare in zambia or in the uk or um you know colombia or wherever else it is those um that revenue that is created um is a capital that will go into an spv um that is designated for a conservation landscape which runs in tenure tracks so that token represents a that 10-year period um and we've identified three main biodiversity custodians that need to um be that need to see receive this revenue one is the government and so this might be in the form of taxes depending on on which country it is heritage custodians or the local communities that are engaging with those environments the land managers um and land managers is interchangeable with land owners as is the heritage custodians and so those revenues will be distributed by an e-wallet system which helps with the traceability and the governance of those revenue flows directly to to the stakeholders on the ground and using that revenue from it um will enable the protection of that landscape driven mostly by the land managers or those community community members and really incentivizing the government to ensure um greater protection and policies around those conservation landscapes and and trying to extend those periods of time from these conservation landscapes um you know some of them might from a starting point start out at a at a high levels of biodiversity some might start off at lower levels of biodiversity and they have a lot of gains to be made those where they're gains to be made um are the ecological gains which have identified over here and that's where the carbon credits the biodiversity credits um that you've been hearing and the other members talk about will be created um the IECNs talking about creating star units the future is going to include water credits so all of these gains that will come out of these landscapes that we could quantify um package and be able to sell will create additional revenue revenue for the SPV um which goes back to the biodiversity custodians at the end of the day investors who are token holders will have access first rights they'll be um seen as members of that SPV and they'll have first um rights to purchase those carbon credits at at discounted rates or biodiversity credits um at discounted rates so the biodiversity token um essentially represents the protection of standing stocks of biodiversity and um including carbon within that um and in those gains that are made um are credits that come out the other side rather um I've included my email there at the bottom if there's any direct questions um try to make it as short as possible to catch up on time there but thank you very much brilliant Simon thanks uh very much for that short and concise uh but very instructive presentation so we now heard from our three developers before we turn to our discussants we've got two uh excellent discussants we'll have our quick poll which we should have had earlier but but we've slightly reject the agenda so maybe Juliet if you can yeah put it up so that it's a simple question maybe for the those on this poll it's self-evident those on this webinar it's self-evident but we want to see whether you think biodiversity credits are a good idea to reduce poverty and conserve biodiversity so you can tick either yes or no so we want to see if you've been convinced by our developers uh you be honest you don't have to be convinced you may have questions stood out there so please tick so we'll give you one minute now just to fill in the answer before we um we uh we hear get the results great so 87 percent of people think that they are a good idea and 13 percent are still a bit skeptical so that's a good mix so we've got mostly people we convinced or who are convinced already and some people who are still thinking about it and we'll come back to some of the challenges in the very interesting questions that are already being asked but I want to hand over now to Pauline from EcoTrust uh this the executive director there just to give her perspective for five minutes on what she's heard okay uh thank you very much I hope you can hear me yeah yeah so I am Pauline Nantongo Kalunda I work with EcoTrust and we are best in Uganda so as you can imagine we are the suppliers of these um uh credits so to speak uh we exist in landscapes that are very dynamic you have the protected areas intertwined with agricultural landscapes and as a result you would have a very dynamic landscape and we have an approach as EcoTrust to to biodiversity conservation or carbon credits or whatever it is for us our business is about the business of landscape restoration and as you can imagine we need this financing to be able to engage in the business of landscape restoration I hope I'm still there I see people are frozen yes yes we can hear you yeah yeah no no we can hear you Pauline okay so yeah so we we we so for and we access these markets as EcoTrust we work as an intermediary we access these markets we need that financing but normally even in their simplest form they are too complicated for us to to be able to to access them and from our perspective it explains why most people would rather they got donor funding do whatever bits they do and and and and just implemented from that perspective so when I listen to these presentations and an attempt has been made for simple transparent and cost effective that resonates with us it resonates from with with where we are coming from because in our landscape you you should be able we we we it is required that you would have a landscape vision but also a community vision as well as a household vision so for you to be able to marry all those the interests of those different perspectives it is important that you're coming from a perspective where the science has already demystify the metrics it has already been worked out for you and most importantly broken down into practical aspects that can be understood by the people that we work with so when I listen to the different examples and they are talking about the units and how they measure the units it's it's very welcome news because they've they've come down to a level that is able to help us understand how to value the service that we are providing and also how to attribute it attribute it at community level but also be able to attribute it at at individual level and also when it comes normally our challenge therefore comes from the perspective of of the beneficiary so whereas the the price and what have you has been derived from other perspectives from the beneficiary we would like to understand are you supporting an investment are you rewarding environmental services or are you compensating us for for loss so so first and foremost it is important that we are not displaced in in favor of biodiversity that we we we are allowed to coexist so for us what would be a preferred approach is that we are allowed to continue living with biodiversity but then so we are not displaced so but also even when you look at it from that perspective for example there is a corridor that we are working on that's why I have the elephants in there but there is a wildlife corridor that we are working on and the more you conserve biodiversity chances are you're going to escalate human wildlife conflict so even even when you you reward or you support an investment if you if you don't leave a certain element to deal with coexistence managing issues of human wildlife conflict then your benefit sharing model is not is not effective because even if you give me money and then I invest in in restoring the landscape the minute the elephants come back or the chimpanzees come back and they start raiding microbes then I will retaliate so it is very important that when you're looking at the compensation model or the reward or benefit sharing model you're able to understand the actual drivers of loss is it an investment barrier is it a compensation is it a reward and in most of the cases you you would have to to put all those things all those considerations together but for me the the the the the the very message that I get from the biodiversity credits is that all the examples that we have seen are are an attempt to add on and and and for me that add on creates creates an opportunity where all the other things that have not been considered for example in carbon projects can now be addressed because if the carbon projects rewarded increase in carbon stocks then the biodiversity credits can be brought to to to deal with the issues of compensation for example arising from human wildlife or at least in the minimum provide the diversified income streams that make managing land that way more profitable and therefore the smallholders choose it because it makes economic sense to them thank you very much great thanks Pauline really important message from the kind of beneficiaries and we'll come back to that hopefully in the discussion so for our final discussion I want to invite Maxime from the senior nature economist from the United Nations development program to give his perspectives Maxime you have the floor for five minutes thank you thank you Paul and thanks for for the initiative and very happy to co-facilitate this discussion co-brand this discussion for UNDP biodiversity credits is actually something that we wouldn't like to miss because I think we we have signs that are telling us that the the appetite is there and the market is being created as we as we speak essentially and even though the markets are just emerging you know I think that the regulatory pressure coming from global level and then from that national levels is going to be mounting on the private sector and so essentially the biodiversity credits is an instrument that the private sectors can deploy in a meaningful way one that actually could help address the regulatory pressure on the one hand but also be within the market principle so to say with which private sector is familiar we've heard in the cpd discussions that the and and we've also heard in this webinar today that the countries the developing countries are in need for investment in conservation from the outside so it's quite clear that trying to trying to leave the developing countries to solve the issues just by themselves is not going to work therefore the partnership between the north and the south if you wish is critical and this is probably where the biodiversity markets play out into the development context and this is why the unity piece is sort of interested to to to support this trend we understand that the market had not been mature and it's just a several transactions so far and and these are non fungible tokens but ultimately I think as the as things develop with the regulators and as more transactions come in and as more exchange of experience comes in now we can expect more standardization we can expect issues that been actually handled in the voluntary carbon markets to pop up and be effectively handled in this market as as well and as one of the presenters reminded us there's history uh maryon said that they they learned the history of habitat banking available from the united states wetlands banking or from australia habitat banking so it's really important to uh to be you know to to demonstrate it to experiment on the one hand but also to learn from those systems that have been out there as well as from the voluntary carbon market history as well of course which is which has lots of parallels which has lots of principles that are similar in the case of biodiversity markets such as permanence or such as leakage and many other principles that need to be addressed um and we also look at it from the point of view of comparing it with other instruments such as bonds performance bonds if you wish and looking at the complexities the pros and cons actually uh we we see more advantages with the with the with the credits than with bonds because bonds are quite difficult they take lots of time to structure they take sometimes exorbitant transaction costs while here we we see a potential to have things very very close to geographies very close to communities we we also are happy that the emerging certifiers such as plan vivo you know they are in the game and they are putting uh panels review panels that help to mitigate the risk of greenwashing so to say or ending up with unrealistic conservation plans um same same sort of approach of certification is actually uh promoting the investment of the proceeds at this part of it as we learn from plan vivo half of the proceeds need to be traced back into community development and again this is a very clear developmental issues either developmental benefit that that plays favorably uh towards you know towards the whole market of biodiversity credits right so for for those uh for the and of course the technology we had Simon presenting on technology so it's it's something that lends itself to be a blockchain if you wish and this this means that you know with the with with the as market develops there's a chance of actually creating creating really fun creating fungibility if you wish at some point this is what ultimately a market uh would be would be looking for and uh of course uh this is just the beginning as I said but I think that working with partners and having exchange like we have today in the webinar where we have cases you know presenting different approaches to metrics presenting different approaches to uh issue of the credits but but at some point hopefully this is going to give us the ground for analyzing these things and creating and and and moving towards moving the market if you wish both in terms of volumes but also with respect to integrity because ultimately what we need we need to have products that are integral if you wish in in terms of conservation benefits that we're looking for but as well as the the the developmental benefits so let me stop here and thank you again for for inviting indyp to be the co-host of these thank you yeah maxine thanks and we do appreciate you indyp co-hosting this event with us um okay well we now have about um uh just under 20 minutes 15 to 20 minutes for q&a um and we've got some really interesting questions that have come in i'm going to um maybe pick three questions which seem to be particularly pertinent and then invite um particularly our three developers uh uh to respond uh that's mariana alex and simon the first question is a question from uh kunari uh or kinari asking about what legal arrangements due diligence and perhaps even more broadly government policy have you engaged with in order to develop your schemes um i mean it was made mentioned by alex i think that um that his colleague tim is off meeting the uh the honduran minister of forestry so to what extent is it needed to engage with legal issues and government policy to get these schemes off the ground uh uh i don't know mariana whether you want to kick off on that one sure um so in the case of columbia for example um terraces has actually participated in the development of policy at the local level um for example defining and determining the criteria to register a habitat bank um where issues such as land tenure uh need to be verified right um and and making sure you know that if there is community involvement there is free prior and important consent processes that are taking place um but in the case of columbia for example if you want to create a habitat bank an issue by diversity credits you will need to register the site with um and you register the site within the ministry of environment and then once it's registered you can sell those credits right and then there's an annual reporting that takes place um so that's that's one component and i think the other component which is just the best practice and we try to document that best practice in our protocol it's um you know verifying tenure you know land tenure rights um and making sure i mean in the end these kinds of projects will only work with the local communities you know they're the ones if if if they're not part of the process um the project is going to fail you know it it's as simple as that it won't you won't be able to maintain a project for 30 years if local communities are not properly engaged um we've had issues with land tenure um in fact you know we it was um just very quick story you know columbia has um some areas that have been illegal illegally um taken by you know individuals and and we were doing the the due diligence and everything was right everything all the paper worked was right um and then as we were finalizing kind of our pre structuring phase um we began to hear some gossip around it's like hey are you guys you know aren't you guys scared of doing a project there you were like okay we need to stop here we need to stop here and really know what's going on um and in fact we can we put the brakes on that project um because there were certain land tenure issues so it's that's something that the project developers need to do and make sure that happens and the and um and communities also if if somebody does suggest and does propose a biodiversity credit project um the community should also do they do diligence on that on that project developer right do they have a track record do they have a track record um what's their reputation and who are the legal representatives communities also need to do that so so I would just say that um again columbia does have a policy on habitat banks we know that Peru is developing a policy on habitat banks as well um and and that's going to be instrumental in allowing this market to mature great thanks uh Simon or Alex do you want to add anything on legal issues or government policy and how and how and it important it is to engage yeah absolutely I think it's an essential part of the the initial sort of due diligence for the project and also the de-risking approach for any um any any corporate that wants to invest in the in the project and then they're going to want to see it much in the same way as they would with carbon credits they would expect to see um that that you've got a letter of approval from sort of authority from the government um to be able to uh channel funds from achieved biodiversity lift up the protection um and so that you're avoiding double counting and there's some where where you've got approval uh approval to do that um so yeah I think it's I think it's crucial that the difficulty is with the carbon market there's an established mechanism for that um with an established accounting um mechanism whereas for biodiversity as of yet there isn't and and so I think that's going to be more about almost not not quite the same as research permit basis but you're there's going to need to be a sort of a tracking of the biodiversity um credits that have been issued for a given area so that so that those credits can't be issued you know um again in in sort of the same area um in the near future um and so they'll have to be that retirement concept and I think that the government will will need to get involved in that if they want to see funding coming into that today there is which I would hope that they would sure um Simon do you want to add anything I mean I think they've covered everything I think that's important to get those government players into the room as soon as possible and start the thinking around biodiversity and what it means um as has happened with the carbon and take that learning that we've got from those and kind of move forward with that but um I think the the early movers in this um you know it's it's our responsibility to start those conversations and to get the right people into the room sure oh if I can just say a little something on that so um we learned something in the colombian policy and if there are any government officials in the room um you know maybe take note here but it's we're able to get um so all the requirements to register projects are in place and they work but one of the things where colombia felt short was it wasn't specific about the duration of these projects so right now we have a risk that anyone could register a habitat bank that is let's say five years or ten years right although there is a complementary guidance that says that it they're a minimum of 20 years but you know there's a fine balance between government policy that sets the rules of the game which is really important to de-risk um and then over over regulating and then kind of and then driving away you know investment into these kinds of mechanisms um but but including kind of registry requirements so what are the minimum that these project need to have uh what's the duration of these projects and how um the accounting needs to happen are three key elements of that regulation that need that makes it easier for everybody to to play and to participate in this market great thanks um okay i want to move on to another key stakeholder perhaps the most important one which we've heard a lot particularly from pauline about the uh the the the host communities as it were or the land the uh the um the people at the front line of managing the biodiversity who often as pauline was explaining suffer from human wildlife conflict in the case of uh of chimpanzees or elephants or other kind of charismatic species um can you just tell us a bit more and some of the questions reflect this particularly um uh nyak has asked about equitable benefit sharing someone has asked about fortress conservation someone has asked about um you know selling up land to foreigners how do we stop this becoming a another kind of land grab um buyer speculators as it were around a buyer credits um i don't know whether anyone wants to comment on that and make sure that uh communities really do get the uh the some of the uh the rewards and what kind of reward it is pauline maybe you want to just shake that question a bit more yeah well um i think that it it is it is maybe a question or maybe a caution and i i think i also saw a question which was saying that whose whose land is it or whose resources are they and i think that um it has also been partially answered the thing is that people need to understand that we have different perspectives that we have different perspectives we in Uganda for example i do not to have i don't need to have a piece of paper to to for me to claim ownership of a land and and all my neighbors know where my land begins and my land stops and we all know which land is communally owned and and and it's perfectly legal so sometimes in the process of of the obsession with documentation the obsession with understanding that uh it's only documentation only when documented are things legal that is sometimes when we when the communities actually lose their rights it is it because a piece of paper can be you can write any name on it or you can claim any name on it yet really when it's not documented then we can sit on the table and and we negotiate and and and that sort of thing i just want people to understand that every legal framework there is a process that is appropriate for every legal framework and it's very important to understand the local dynamics and and and design these systems in a manner that is fits in these systems so it's not everywhere that you have to overhaul the legis the the legal framework to be able to operate sometimes it is in the process of overhauling the legal framework that actually writes uh uh uh law so so for me i just wanted to highlight that so the the almost every legal framework can provide a process of engagement and the process of attribution and therefore a process of benefit sharing thank you but of course there are places where the the legalities of things need to be clarified but it's not always the case right thanks so Simon over to you yeah i think um Pauline thanks for that and i think it highlights the value of local players and actors on the ground that you you know that you need to engage with and to understand some of these complexities and so i think that that's going to be one of the issues with the scaling of some of these mechanisms and what we've seen in the carbon markets where you know organizations are parachuting in and getting involved locally and wrapping up carbon rights for example with no real understanding of the local complexities and mechanisms um on hand so um i think that you know again some of these the first players in this and thinking about how we scale this the it's important to think about how we include the local actors and mechanisms on the ground that are going to be managing these landscapes engaging the local communities that are that are often the the ones that are managing these landscapes and ensuring that we don't kind of overstep um and or remove some of that value from from those entities on the ground so i think engaging with with the likes of you know eco trust and you know whoever might be working in Uganda or if you moved to Zambia or if you're going to Colombia you know you've got to make sure that you're engaging with those local actors because that's the only way to kind of get around but there's there's no ways that we can come in and think that we understand some of the complexities that exist on the ground and then from a conflict perspective you know it's really about just trying to drive that value and so that conflict doesn't you know we go beyond the conflict by ensuring that those entities are seen are valued beyond what the conflict creates and and change the kind of view and the lens of what those and what biodiversity represents for for those people living with biodiversity. Great thanks and Alex just very quickly because i have one final question i want to ask you. Okay sure and yeah i would just say i'd agree with those those points for short and spam and pulling and just to add that it's probably one of the most important issues one of the biggest threats to biodiversity credits is the governance around um stakeholder benefits and so i think that it's where we can learn from where there there are problems that were exposed from the carbon markets and i think that how that how that's governed with the biodiversity that's going forward will be very important and but in particular how you know there's the risk of somebody purchasing a biodiversity credit and four or five dollars goes into the local stakeholders and then but it's then on sold for a huge markup and and you get in there 50 60 70 dollars um that's going to another corporation outside of so that the actual benefit isn't going into that country um but i think that there's something that can be regulated against and i think that's where you can bring in regulators such as time either or such as um you know other other credit bodies to look at the financial flows attached with biodiversity credits or carbon credits um to start to miss get that and you have extra technologies like blockchain um which which can also help provide some guarding um for that sort of onward transaction sale so um i think it's a real challenge but i think it is one that that can be certainly to some extent anyway um sort of audited um so that we can we can ensure that there is proper stakeholder benefit from each project great thanks and the final question i just want to ask you is um the demand side we've heard about the supply side the local communities we've heard about the role of government is there appetite in the private sector i'm in maxima alluded to this but are you seeing real demand from private investors to buy these credits can you share some insights into that and whether you think this is going to explode as with the voluntary carbon market is there signs of hope uh mariana do you want to kick off just very quickly i'm convinced you know i'm an optimist otherwise i will you know i would not be working on this for the last five years um but um so so first of all from a regulatory market perspective you know carbon um sorry biodiversity credits um for companies that want to be that want to offset their impacts or that they want to make nature positive statements the the appetite is there the appetite is there the transactions are happening right so for buyers we're seeing it um and we're also seeing it with individuals you know individuals that want to purchase biodiversity credits that represent tangible um conservation outcomes on the ground something that they can imagine that they can see something that it's palpable we're seeing it and otherwise you know we would have not had you know the sale of those 30 voluntary biodiversity credits within a three three week uh window right so we know that it's there um and we're seeing also interest from investors um i think investors are i mean they still they don't understand these markets very well yet um there's a tendency to compare it to the carbon market um i think this is going to be different i think the biodiversity credits are going to be a different beast um and so even though there's a lot of interest we're you know there's there's a lot of doubts still um but we're seeing you know we're seeing it um and with companies in fact and and i'm kind of combining the two but but i it's difficult not to do it because um you know that's where we're seeing the demand but of our 2 000 hectares that are under management right now i would say 70 of those credits are fully are reserved at this point you know and and so so we know that it's there right okay sorry i mean i need to pass on to our other two developers so simon any what is your sense of the demand that's out there well um i don't think we'd have 200 people sign up for this if there wasn't some kind of chatter out there um about what's happening in the space um so i think that that speaks for itself in a way um but we've definitely had a lot of pickup um and a lot of movements in that direction and i think something that mariana mentioned there is you know we've got to be careful of the complexities around this and try and simplify things for the for the investor community and i think that there will be stages um that we go through and that's really what we're trying to address um with the biodiversity token is is to just develop a mechanism for that finance to go in and for the gains to happen at a later stage and for those credits to come but to try and simplify the process um and just try and get the um revenue in for the protection of the landscapes and i think with all the nature positive calls that are happening out there and movement that we're really going to see um this market grow rapidly um as we've you know as we get these tokens and credits up at all right and alex last word to you on demand sure um so unlike mariana my my work is predominantly financial so i'm a pessimist by nature um and i'm 100 convinced that there's a very strong market for for biodiversity credits and you know we're regularly asked for them we've been able to to generate funding um for biodiversity credits even while they're still um in the development phase um and and so i i think there's there's no doubt um as with almost every corporate purchase of carbon credits is looking to be able to quantify um biodiversity benefits from from projects and so i i think that biodiversity credits are inevitable um and there is definitely a market out there for them right okay well with that we have to come to the end of our webinar so uh you know we've we've heard about uh fascinating insights from the developers from the need and the need to engage with government the need to make sure the money flows to the local households and then obviously that the demand is there from the investors and the buyers so with that we thank you very much and we uh please look at the recording share the link and um and keep the conversation thank you very much everybody thank you everyone thank you thank you everybody


For fresher one suggestion I want to give like along with projects you just need to highlight some skill set as well. So in Salesforce we have different skill sets like admin backend development which is done through Apex and all. Then we have front-end development which is which you implement with the help of LWC. Then if you have done Omni Studio you can highlight that if you have if you know the some clouds like sales clouds marketing cloud or any industry specific cloud or maybe like CPQ or industry CPQ. So you just need to highlight what skill sets you have no matter whether they are written in your CV apart from that like if you highlight and you can also say like in these things I am good in these things I am intermediate so this way like you can get the attention of interviewer so that they can ask really good questions.


Every individual involved in the food industry, from farm to table, is concerned with food safety. And the primary thrust of this concern is directed towards preventing the unintentional contamination of that food. But what if some individuals or group desires to intentionally contaminate food for political or other reasons? Are we prepared to recognize and prevent such an act? Such an act has happened several times in the past, and it's likely to occur again in the future. Unfortunately, one of the most notorious cases occurred in the United States in 1984. It happened in the Dalles, Oregon, a small town located along the Columbia River. Members of a commune and followers of an Indian cult leader, the Bhagwan Rashnish, purposely contaminated salad bars at 10 local restaurants with salmonella on a Sunday in September. The result was 751 confirmed cases of salmonella poisoning. Additionally, before it was over, four of the contaminated restaurants went out of business, putting many employees out of work, and three of the owners were forced into personal bankruptcy. Ironically, investigators from the Center for Disease Control in the Oregon State Department of Health determined the incidents were accidental and caused by poor hygiene on the part of the restaurant workers at the 10 separate locations. The investigators simply could not believe the incident had been purposely caused, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The true nature of the incident was not revealed until a year later when the Bhagwan himself reported the perpetrators to the Oregon police. It is doubtful whether the CDC or any other investigators today would be as reluctant to consider such an incident as to be a biostarist attack, especially now considering 9-11 and the subsequent anthrax incidents. The possibility of intentional contamination of our food supply remains a threat that must be taken seriously. It's a threat that once recognized can be defended against with good planning, common sense, and appropriate vigilance. The following segments will help you prepare a defensive plan for your organization that can be employed successfully to meet this challenge. The steps are simple. Assess your current situation, prepare your plan, test it by conducting periodic exercises, and modify it as required. The United States has one of the safest food supplies in the world, but the threat of terrorism has changed the face of many industries, including food service. Attacks on the World Trade Center and the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City have made us reevaluate our safety. The United States has also become increasingly aware that the use of anthrax or any other threatening agent on even a small scale can overcome our emergency response system, and a deliberate act to contaminate the food supply could have catastrophic effects. Terrorism is defined as a use of force or violence against persons or property in violation of criminal laws for the purpose of intimidation, coercion, or ransom. Protecting against these acts isn't just the responsibility of authorities. Everyone involved from the farm to the table must play a role. Protection against both intentional and unintentional contamination is important in the food service study. There are several types of intentional threats, including chemical, biological, and nuclear. Let's start with chemical.  Often chemical agents are difficult to detect in the food we eat. Examples of chemical agents can include toxic organic compounds, industrial chemicals, pesticides, heavy metal containing compounds, and microbial or plant toxins. Chemical threats are usually spread by inhalation, ingestion, or exposure by skin or eye contact. The next type of threat is biological. Biological agents are living infectious microbes or toxins produced by microorganisms. They can be dispersed as liquid, solid, or aerosol. Biological agents are the biggest concern in the food industry. When looking into contamination by biological agents, public health agencies look for clusters of illness and disease outbreaks because biological contamination can spread rapidly. Unlike chemical contamination, which is often localized, biological threats can be widespread because they could affect others who weren't initially exposed. Biologic agents are highly contagious, and it's difficult for authorities to identify whether the outbreak is an intentional or unintentional event. Symptoms look much the same as foodborne disease and can include headache, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle weakness, and seizures. That's why it's important to report illness in your establishment because it may be the sign of a larger contamination. The third type of threat is nuclear. The threat of a nuclear attack on our food supply is slim. However, a nuclear attack in the United States could affect all aspects of life. The government is actively looking into ways to protect against a nuclear attack through intelligence and early detection. A restaurant can be at risk for many types of contamination. That's why it's important to have a plan of action. This plan will prepare all employees to deal with a potential threat or deliver contamination. It is very worthwhile. That's what the goal of preventing the stuff happening is, is to assess your risk and find the weak spots. Depending on the size of your business, assessing the risk can be a time-consuming process, but it is worthwhile. Only management and emergency personnel should be involved in the assessment process so that unauthorized persons aren't aware of potential weak spots. One of the first things to consider during assessment are emergency contacts. Businesses should be familiar with the emergency response system in their community. That way, if an emergency does occur, management and employees will know immediately who to contact. 24-hour contact should be listed and staff should be trained on how to use them. All employees should know who to contact on the management team for the establishment. And then there should also be 24-hour contacts for all local, state, federal police, fire, any rescue operations in the area, the health department, and so on. The next step in assessment is identifying the areas that are not in the public eye. These will vary depending on the size of the facility, but can include loading docks, storerooms, bathrooms, and employee entrances or exits. Anything that is not in a public area or is poorly lit is considered a risk. Management should check these places carefully and document any potentially vulnerable spots. Loading areas are especially important to assess. Loading docks are generally out of the public eye. They are not in a secure location. Some facilities may have fenced in areas that help prevent unauthorized access to those facilities. Another area that should be looked at is the establishment's water supply. If you're on a private well, make sure your well house is locked and your water lines are as secure as possible. First find out if you're on a community or a municipal system or a private well. All municipal systems double check. Go over that with them. Find out what their safety procedures are to see if their facility is secure. If you're on a private well, make sure and secure all water connections. Make sure backflow prevention is installed properly and at your establishment. When assessing risks, it's also important to pay attention to your management practices. Have staff been trained on what to look for when accepting shipments? Do you know the character of the person working in the areas you've identified as high risk? Are there security controls for outside contractors such as pest control and cleaning crews?  Employees can be a great resource in watching for suspicious activity. When you have people in a large-scale facility where you might not be able to view everything, have employees work in pairs that you know so there's less chance of a single person committing some kind of act. Answering these simple questions about your management practices will help you to identify more areas that could be vulnerable to intentional contamination. Now that you've assessed your business's potential risks, it's time to formulate a plan for emergencies. The main goal of food protection plans should not only be prevention. It should be more of a three-prong approach where it would include not only prevention strategies, but it also would include response plans and recovery plans for a business that's paramount that they have the means to recover after an event. You'll want to have a planning session to go over your risk and response. This is when management invites more employees to be included. In a small operation, the management, chefs and servers would be involved in this meeting. The larger your operation, the more people that should be involved in planning. You're going to have the CEO, possibly the COO or operations, people who are in charge of operations. You'll want to have obviously the quality assurance, food safety professionals, your security officers, finance and IT, transportation officials, so it could be, depending on the size of your company, a very large team. The National Restaurant Association recommends using a six-step approach of threat evaluation, assessment and management or team approach. You may have done some assessment and planning already, which fits perfectly with the first step to identify the potential threats in all phases of the operation. Potential threats might exist at any step in the flow of food from purchasing to serving. The second step is to assess the threats and determine which have the highest risk level or which could have the greatest negative impact. And then you assess whether it's a likelihood of an event or what the impact, so you're going to thoroughly assess what impact that would have on your operation. For each threat, you can assign a severity and probability rating. The severity rating will assess how much damage could result, and the probability rating assesses how likely the act is to occur. This will help you to determine which may be the greatest threat to your operation. The third step is to analyze threat control measures and establish management controls or procedures to eliminate potential threats and or reduce their risk levels. Threat control measures can include adding security devices such as key cards to limit access, installing warning devices such as alarms on doors, and developing procedures and training staff in case there is an emergency. Or for smaller operations, consider your risk and take appropriate action. Step four includes implementing control measures and establishing management monitoring of each critical exposure point. The management is responsible for ensuring that staff, vendors, and contractors follow all protocol, including showing credentials. Managers are responsible for monitoring potentially vulnerable spots in the establishment from deliveries through service. When working on this step, you may want to consider these management questions. How do you monitor? Who will monitor and how often? And how are vulnerabilities recorded? Step five, take corrective actions when there is a break in management control at the critical exposure point. Corrective actions should eliminate any potential exposure due to the loss of management control such as in a natural disaster. If management is not available, companies should have a crisis communication team and a plan in place and keep a record of corrective actions taken. The final step is to verify and review to make sure that team is working. All food defense plans must be tested regularly to ensure that all staff members are following protocol. That's where it's important to have human resources involved in regards to developing any kind of program for food security because they have that one-on-one interaction with your employees and they have programs in place that identify at-risk employees, disgruntled employees. If issues are found while testing the plan, an action plan should be updated to resolve issues. This is part of a continuous improvement process.  It's important to implement the plan before an actual incident happens because when you're operating in crisis mode, it's too late to find out if your plan works. Actually, the preparation for any type of event will prepare you for whatever may come your way. If you've done nothing, you're going to be in trouble. There are two ways to test and train to the plan. First, you can train managers and employees by communicating the plan to them. When doing this, it's a good idea for the manager to designate a member of the team to act as a security manager. Security is often an additional job responsibility depending on the size of the facility. This person is a key contact for all security measures in the facility and will report to the manager. They will also be in charge if an emergency does happen. Security managers know employees well. They watch for suspicious behavior in the facility, they monitor deliveries, they make sure everyone is fully trained on the defense plan. I think it's very important that the security manager be the one that assembles all the employees from time to time and go over things with them. You can do it once a year, but if you don't do it on a recurring basis, everybody kind of forgets what they should be doing. There are a number of training styles and tools that can be used. Managers and employees can be trained to the plan by using short training periods or extended classroom trainings. Handouts, wallet-sized information cards, or other training aids can help staff to familiarize themselves with procedures. Training can be done by using role-playing or by interviewing employees and asking them questions. Short role-playing may involve as few or as many players as needed for the situation. For example, create a scenario such as a delivery arriving at an unscheduled time. What steps should your staff take to ensure that contaminated materials don't make it into your facility? If you choose to use interview questions when training, the questions should deal with more specific actions such as the who, what, where, and how to be prepared. Why is it important to inspect your shipment? Make sure nothing's been tampered with or contaminated. Managers can demonstrate the location of needed materials and how to contact emergency and security personnel. Keeping in touch with and knowing your local emergency contacts, networking with your Chamber of Commerce, and having your plan reviewed by your state or local homeland security or Department of Health are also good ways for management to keep the plan fresh and to make sure that proper procedures are being followed. These contacts will also help you to keep abreast of community, county, or state emergency tests you can participate in. This will test how your plan coordinates with larger security plans in your area. The last step in testing the plan is examining what worked and what didn't. Change and update your plan and then test it again in the near future. This will help your plan to remain effective in protecting your staff and customers as well as your business. We are all responsible for protecting our food supply and each one of us can play an important role by making sure that there is a food defense plan in place. Training staff on the plan and adjusting the plan is necessary. This advanced preparation can enable your facility to prepare, respond, and recover if there's a potential threat. We all can make a difference and a food defense plan is the first step. Now that you've heard stories of intentional contamination, how to formulate a plan to protect against it, and how to test that plan, you're probably wondering should we panic? The short answer is no, but we should recognize bioterrorism as a threat. Take that threat seriously, but also keep it in perspective. It should not be the dominant issue in any food service operation. That's not to say that we shouldn't plan for a possible intentional contamination. A simple, well-designed plan will be the best defense. Complicated plans will be impossible to implement, and oftentimes they'll be ignored. Make sure to test your plan and modify it as necessary. Encourage all your workers to become involved in both the planning and the testing processes. The bottom line, the best defense is awareness by all, so have a good plan and implement it.