Hello, everyone. It is meeting 13 of the Active Inference Textbook Group, cohort one. It is the final meeting of this section. It's July 28th, 2022. And we are going to be especially thinking about feedback and structuring on this textbook group. On how the first, half of the first cohort went, and also ways that over quite literally the coming minutes and hours and days, we will be able to implement structures to improve our experience for those of us who are continuing on to part two cohort one, as well as those who are joining for a new cohort. In the onboarding page, there are two columns with checkboxes. And clicking these checkboxes will sign you up to continue on in chapter six or ten for cohort one, as well as, or alternatively, to join in chapters one through five with cohort two. So select one or both of these boxes if you'd like to be continuing on. That's the onboarding note. And again, other than that, which I hope those who are here or watching live update according to how they want. Other than that, we're going to be talking about future textbook groups and other things like that. And then also just on the informational briefly on the future textbook group page. Here's the link to share with people to join future textbook cohorts. So to join in and then also please fill out this feedback form. It's really important that even if people think they have limited or non valuable feedback that they provide it, because whether it's on this page directly where everyone can edit. And so every thought that somebody has, like even if right now they can just edit this page, or in this more anonymous and asynchronous mode or through direct communication, but we're experiencing it. And so we have the best insight at this point into how to improve it and the affordances that we're seeing today or the state updates or however you want to use ontology terms to describe it. But what we're seeing today, we can do. So we should have a fun discussion today on some of those topics. And then also look towards project ideas, many of which are related to the educational process and others which are building on education into research and application. And so there will be spaces for those as well. Let's begin though on this future textbook groups page. And anywhere where people want to jump in writing or speaking, how are we going to summarize and distill the experience of the last few months in this textbook group and bring it towards improvements in our coming cohorts. Yeah, I think having worked examples as I've talked about and discussed with Brock like in Jupiter notebooks or like even like simple, like did you understand the material like question and answer like quizzes at the end of each chapter or something like that, I think which just would be useful like to gauge your own understanding like if there is like a definition or something that we can directly refer back to in the text, that'd be useful. Okay, worked examples. Yes. Great. And the questions could also include little tests of knowledge. Not every question needs to be throwing a baseball into the deep unknown. It can be literally clarifying for someone who believes that an answer is in the known unknown space. I believe there's an answer for this I just want to clarify for my understanding, but also once you've clarified that and especially if you did just clarify it, then write that example. Because many of these are opportunities for worked examples and working examples work in certain situations. For formalisms, for example, it might also work for formalisms that aren't mathematical. Like, here's the system this way or this phenomena, how do these ontology terms map? Or if this is the blank, then what is the other thing? So we have, okay, anyone else just go for it or let's just continue to edit and organize and add notes and just have more. Because many people are having many thoughts on directions to go. And I just like, what is the space of some improvements that we can explore? And then how will we be implementing some of these changes? And then in core two when someone's like, it could be this way and they thought of something that's new and not on this list, we add it. If it's on this list, we say, awesome. We agree. Join us and do it. Anyone else with raised hands or we can look more at a few other sections before going to the projects? Like, I see different regimes of attention. I think one way that we can structure that is by clarifying what practices were explicating and where those practices can take place. So then because the reality is and people are here or listening and replay can give their input. Many people may not have known what exactly to do to engage with the material. There's a textbook. There's some regular meetings. There's an information resource. And it's like an infinite game to structure beneficial engagement and where the rubber hits the road is like being clear about what practices people can engage in. So if we have math, like not everything has to be. Practical out into sub sub sub groups. Just including many of the practices. Like if you want to do art about active inference. Here's a practice and then if people are engaging in that practice, it does like create kind of like a group or a guild. Engaging in that performance. So however people think, like what are useful. Minutes and seconds that actually help learning active inference. And we'll be able to have a perspective on that question in years from now that's very different based upon better understandings of competencies and the fundamentals and the approach meant to the area. However, I think the practices table and providing feedback and then sharing and communicating how we're using practices to increase understanding could be very important for those who are learning and learning how to learn. Jessica and then anyone else. Hi, yes. I think to build up on sort of like blue suggestion. I'm thinking that on, like, in some of the courses that I've taken, you have like the other participants giving sort of like feedback as part of the learning process, you give feedback on like the other participants work. And so it could be that like there's an exercise and everybody has to like fill it up and etc. And then the other participants or like it could be like two or three. So not everybody has to do everything.  Because then that way by having to critique or like analyze all the people's work, it helps you think through the material itself. And so that's like another way of also like learning again. There's also missing like you can make you could probably like making a mistake also not applying it correctly. But it's like a tool to help you think through the material by analyzing somebody else's work. Well, also, you know, initially also having to do yourself and then hearing also the feedback that other people are going to be giving you. So I was kind of an idea that came to mind like making reference from like all their experiences. Thank you Jessica. Yes. I think that's a great area to keep in mind and to balance. As our cohorts build and so on, like who's on the supply and who's on the demand side of that. So to speak, like who is actually offering the feedback. And then who is the people who are wanting feedback. Like some of these projects are things where the person was able to be brought into another project. Like the like Noah's and Mike's work, bringing them into synchronous and asynchronous resources that are already happening, provided them with at least a first step or continuing on their journey. Others are there in different areas and so how to keep it open when people have ideas ranging from educational improvements to robotic deployments. What kind of feedback they need and then how to balance like the excitement around applying active inference with what it means to learn. Like there are biochemistry classes. It's not all just biochemistry lab. But who's to say that's even the best way or anything like that. It's just we want to make sure that we keep it all in mind. Jessica. Yeah, and I think this suggestion is not connected to someone's project or net 16 project is more like an exercise.  And then, yeah, like every participant in the class go actually does the exercise and then is assigned to other people in the cohort and to analyze that person's submission.  And like, you know, it's going to be like for everybody, everyone will be getting three, three feedback on like how they apply the terms or like, you know, there are other ways that they could be done, etc. And I mean, if some of the things are like math related, like, I will have to see and because then the answer is going to be more clear, it's not going to be a subjective. But it's more like, you know, there's a short exercise. Everybody does the exercise. And then some people then get to review that. And, you know, that answer of the person and give feedback on that. So it's like separate from an actual project. Okay, makes sense. It's kind of like a combination of having a good example questions with an organizational structure and then like you said balancing like where there might be a clear measuring stick. Like, was this the right equation or the right calculation or not versus how did this usage of affordances in a new context make sense to you. And also it's not just about getting feedback on the person's idea. It's like the practice of providing constructive ideally written comments is super important. Like the secret side of the questions is the discourse where the kinds of things that questions and ideas that send people on thought excursions and research rabbit holes. We can collaborate on that response together. And it doesn't have to be the end all be all, but sometimes by putting like a seed into the workspace by putting like a prompt or a question. 10 people could write for five minutes and then there would be 50 minutes of writing on that topic from different perspectives. Whereas if there's 10 people also there could be five minutes of discussion, which might add more seeds onto the table and it might continue to invoke whimsy or it might continue to instruct if there was a broad uncertainty that the five minutes of discourse resolved. Yeah. I think like for the questions on it's like somebody has like a question that they're trying to understand and everybody's giving it the crowdsource answer and helping you know, sense make on the meaning of how things are with the exercise. I think similar to I think what blue wants to do with like the short like exercises to test whether people know the concept or not. It's just like adding like by having people critique all the people's work and having to like critically think through the answer is another level of learning. Because you it's not just like oh I think this is the answer to this is like now I really have to understand and want the concept that I'm using to evaluate an answer and then also evaluate that person's answer and kind of compare and contrast. And that like having to make that exercise of critical thinking. I think helps people learn like in a more in depth way because you have to think through your own thinking process and like what things mean what somebody else was saying etc. And yeah and I've seen it applied to like writing. I mean I guess it's maybe like easier to like writing courses and things like that. But yeah it's like another way of. Yeah, like processing through the information and and then also. You know so maybe like reduces the burden or maybe like a person having to like go through everybody's answer and make sure like yeah like I am the teacher correcting everybody's answers like. It's sharing the responsibility around everybody in the group of. You know like kind of answering you know like evaluating people's like responses to an exercise. Thank you Brock and then anyone else with the recent. Just to agree with Jessica and the last part with what I was going to add that but yeah that just systematically created creating a systematic affordance for people to. Review or. Provide some. Validation that it's correct or on the right path or whatever. Will reduce the burden there and. Teaching. It's probably the best way to learn. It's learning how to learn is it's like difficult to do without teaching like learning self learning is about teaching yourself. To get better at teaching you get better at teaching yourself. Which. Just the circle that does kind of require some meta structure to like. Create examples or source them or whatever. And then provide them. So I'm not sure. Outside of the. Project that I put on there and. Maybe it's kind of related to Jacobs as well but outside of those two things I'm not sure we have a clear. Affordance to do that yet so. Or come up with examples of. Yeah like examples to work or whatever yeah like sort either sourcing them and then putting them in a structure that says oh this is for. Section the chapter one or whatever one point one or whatever. This is a not questions that are related to specific parts of the textbook with people to work through but what kind of table or structure. Could be I guess virtually the same but instead of a question a question somebody is asking it's an example. For other people to answer maybe with an answer. That they can see like that they want to reveal it or whatever but these does that make sense. Yes yes. That's that's what it could be an example to work through and discourse it doesn't be in this exact date but just make sure that we have written it down. And everyone can be contributing to like write it down and what the structure is because it's not like this is a impossible affordance. We can spin up the table right now and template it and just start to design it and over the coming weeks we have time to digest all these different inputs. To make it so you know in a few weeks. It will fly by but we might be able to be implementing these things. I wanted to ask what practices did people feel like they engaged in rootfully, whether it's on here or not just when you were participating in the active textbook group. What did you feel like you were doing and how did it help equation translation that was like the most helpful things that I did. And I don't think it's there. Well I guess it's kind of there. It was like to copy the equations down but like putting them into natural language was probably like the thing that I did that was maybe most useful for myself and others. Yep. It was a great practice and it leads to in scaffold so many other why is it this way what does this mean what are the examples it's not like the prerequisite per se. It's possible to ask questions without having the natural language description. But whether it's a basic or a multi line equation. It helps bring conciliance to that discussion. Because there's a non zero probability that then a term is going to be used loosely or it's going to be used one way and then it's going to be conversational use slightly differently. Or people will not agree on which ontology terms are invoked or not. Which can then have every equation start to spiral off into every possible ontology term. And they very well might actually connect that way. But being able to see what is variational free energy. And if there's some term that is being connected to variational free energy that's not being described in the equation. That's fine. Like least squared error isn't in the linear regression y equals MX plus B. So there can be formal and informal concepts that are super important for understanding. That aren't with a symbol. But this was a great way to be clear what the symbols actually are. What other practices did people feel like they benefited from? What would they recommend for a daily schedule for somebody who wanted to learn a lot? I think plus one there on blues. Like writing the equations which is like maybe a super simple but open-ended almost kind of version of Jessica's suggestion. But also in general just adding stuff to the coda. Asking questions. Like if you read and you don't ask a question. Did you really grapple with it at all? I don't know. How do we improve thinking by writing in the actual number of typed words that people add in as a proxy? During a discussion is one thing but even just afterwards or on their own timeframe. How can we have 10 people who do read a chapter just scaling numbers? Each of them could think of several questions. Ranging from simple I wasn't sure about to simple again like more like an example one. There are the three kinds of this and it's totally known and their answers fully listed to research your questions. But how could we have many more inputs in terms of the questions that people are asking? Do people feel like they wrote questions in their own notes but didn't bring it into shared workspace? Or do people feel like for themselves or others that they observed that the questions weren't actually phrased? Jessica, then anyone else? I was going to share more about the student practices. But I guess like the last question you mentioned. There were things that I didn't put in the general textbook thing. Which were more about passing information and which was like helping me connect the dots and synthesize information. Which Ali actually helped me with some of that. But those things were sort of like personal for me to like try to make sense of the material. And in terms of the student practices I like initially I was thinking to do like every day. Like an hour each for like the reading and maybe like an hour for the math to kind of get foundational things. But then I found it was like better for me to maybe dedicate like a longer period of time on one day or two days for the reading. So I was supposed to like a little bit of the reading or like chunk more on two or three hours in one day. And then maybe like follow up another day with like a longer period of reading as well instead of daily reading a little bit. And I think that's more because I guess for memory. I mean they do say to do like repetition for memory. But I think like for me it was like well read longer and you know have like the material fresh in your mind. So like reading as opposed to going every day. And then like for the math because I guess there's less of the you know keeping the material fresh in your mind. Like yeah like daily I was trying to do that. So then it fell off a little bit on that part. But yeah kind of at least one every day like four days a week at least like an hour or so like trying to focus on the math. But yeah that's kind of how my practice you know got you know develop over time through the course. So the textbook is for as the like the research people who want to apply in their research if we remember like from the introduction. Provide readers with the ability to understand and use active inference in their own research. We'll have a better sense after part two with a more applied side. Who might the next cohort of the textbook group be in and communicate to yes. Over many iterations and you know can go many ways but when people are thinking like in the next few weeks. Who blew wrote OK. Can we review which questions and understand. Because I don't quite understand how. Like so if we go to the like if you want to check out the questions check out like chapter two like and a lot of the questions were so if you scroll down. Keep scrolling keep scrolling like I'm trying to think about. Which ones that were skipped let's see. And also there's no skipping there's what we can address in the one hour or two hours. Right but I mean like we can raise our attention to all the important questions. Yeah it was just like and then I realized like most of my questions were like of a largely technical nature. So let me scroll through the code and see if I can find them but it was like in chapter two it was like let's see. Like the general thing to be is how can we among other things. Prevent question self censorship and filtering. The question isn't just like this one like genius meets genius perfectly framed specific answer that will be understood in one sentence. But that question is like a broader space of prompts that don't necessarily have any prior on whether it has to do with an application or it could be a technical question. It was early it was like in chapter two and chapter three and there were like a lot of questions. I'm trying to like look at the specific I'll have to look at my own code instead of watching you beautiful people but it was. And like it just happened early like in those meetings and it's not that there wasn't time like that we didn't address the questions in order it was like let's skip this because it's technical let's skip this because it's technical. So I just stopped putting my questions in because I feel like they're technical like what does this little squiggly symbol mean and that's why like for me the translation of equations into natural language was the most useful thing because I feel like all of my questions are technical like related to the math. So I stopped entering them into the code because they were just skipped over. Okay, thanks. Well, you appreciate it. Again, I personally hope that we can have structures that uncouple the perceived importance of real time speech from the contributions that people make. So that we can be really clear about like which questions we're going to be addressing a conversation, but and use conversation for what it can bring. Many things. And then have 200 questions in chapter two with many upvoters or with whatever mechanism that brings different questions to the for so there isn't even like the plausibility of being skipped it's just a question of like what will we raise up and focus on individually and as a group. From the many, many questions of different kinds that support a beginner with fundamentals and a pre beginner with background and somebody who's asking research questions as well. So I think one simple thing is if you go back to the questions table like you have a interest column here. Interesting. Yes, even better. Maybe there is a what we will address in the net coming live stream or a session kind of table that is taken from the questions table. But the questions table has no such like projection of what is interesting or not in some especially in some one dimensional kind of like yes or no. It's just a separation of random things prompts questions. And then there is some process to get it to what will what will be addressed in the live stream that again there's ways to like try to do things like randomization or trying to like ensure that you know we don't continuously ask. Focus from one person or things like that. The popularity doesn't kind of win the day. There's more complex ways to do this that are kind of almost like decision making processes like. The femoral group processes and things like that, but I think just separating them. It would be helpful there at least. Another thing maybe like zoom you can do breakout rooms. Maybe that's not the format, but again just that that's kind of an ephemeral group processing like perhaps everyone doesn't want to focus on the same questions. Should there be temporary temporary split of regime of attention and that for some short period of time and then we combine. Don't know what that means for a live stream or recording precisely, but that's possible solution. Yeah, thanks. Gather is awesome for these things, but it does require clarity around how it's going to be done. Like mass one on one breakouts mass smaller great breakouts and rearranging people using their spatial location to express different things and assemble into different ephemeral teams. Okay, let's look at some project ideas. Okay, so for those who are here and I hope I'm not misrepresenting anything. Mike brought up some token economies that's something that we've been actively going towards in active block fronts. So I'll just add just a note column in active block fronts as well as as mentioned earlier. Working with Noah on some more some related topics. Okay. Audio book recording of the textbook just as we go through these projects. I've recorded the first chapter and the preface type of materials. Do people think that an audio recording has utility? And if so, is anyone interested to pursue this avenue with blue and I because it's very defined and it involves primarily the equations having natural descriptions and then just reading. And it can go many other directions too but this is like kind of a clear accessibility affordance for different participants that might be interesting as well as just get out there on like YouTube and other channels as having that artifact blue. I do think it's useful obviously if I've elected to I didn't realize I signed up to be the participant lead but I'm so happy to do it. Co-lead, but but I do think it's useful as someone who drives like a considerable amount of time like every day. If it's not like I'm not a very good auditory learner but it does help to like reinforce the concepts and I just wanted to mention. Even if like you're not comfortable perhaps like doing the math or reading the textbook. Daniel thinks he can read it until it's perfect. I would prefer to do some video or audio editing. So that's also an option is to do audio editing like where he's like you know you occasionally like stutter. Daniel doesn't very infrequently but I but there's the occasional tripping over a word or like saying a word twice like when you lose your place or something like that. So video or audio editing. I do it with Windows video editor but like audio editing is also another possible affordance there. And it would involve like you know read along with the textbook to make sure that it's accurate that no sentences are skipped and then to just splice out any like mishaps or just ask him to re-record the you know Markov blanket for precision just so you can place it over the trip trip up if needed. Yeah thanks definitely we would do a multi part. I just did one pass on the first chapter no equations etc draft but okay anyways just so people who are interested here or rewatching can know about this okay resources for conducting research or developing active inference agents ways to facilitate the starting of that work for participants just a seed idea. A lot of this is going to be explored in part two because it's a recipe for designing the models and we'll have a lot of infrastructure around that as well. So I hope whoever wrote this continues in that interest and builds that starting point for conducting research or developing agents based around what they learn and see in part two. Okay. Okay. Also typing just directly in the code is a little better than comments because sometimes it's hard to understand what the comments are like referring to like okay complete mathematical overview of active inference. Derivations of key results maps of equations. Yes. All awesome thank you Yaka for suggesting this. I think the closest related works are in the active ontology and knowledge engineering and other areas to. And I hope that we're on this path. So however, Yaka for anyone else wants to connect on that. Okay, active foundations. So here we added this page. If Brock or anyone else wants to add any comments or describe how some of these comments can be integrated with textbook group. Short answers I'm not entirely sure the precise way to integrate it with the textbook group. But they're just perhaps this is related to questions making questions, removing the stigma or whatever. Like it's just helpful I think to have some affordance or regime of attention or whatever thing that says, hey, if you don't understand this thing about active inference, that's a foundational thing like okay I get entropy but and I get energy like the basic concepts of them but like when you're subtracting them.  Mathematically what is energy or you know what is Shannon entropy specifically what is the difference. These sorts of things. A it's that and affordance for that but B it's also just acknowledging like there's a wealth of knowledge already here. It's not a complete mystery what those background foundational things are it's or what learners might want to get out of some relatively short course to like get up to speed and feel real confident reading the textbook. And so there's a kind of top down affordance there too I think that needs to be made for people that can say hey there's a bunch of equations over or examples over here that are these are the most helpful ones I've found for understanding what Bayesian inference really is how that really works. So I guess it would be those two things but if you look into the project notes there on that project idea. And it's there's a little more detail of them. Yeah just a couple bullet points there of just it's really hard for people I think to get into a new thing if there's not a model. If you do chemistry without Bors model like good luck. If you have to jump especially to something like electron probability clouds or something that's just like why would you do that when you have a perfectly good periodic table and simple discrete you know and it's enough even to do basic physics like Newtonian stuff. Right so need a model like I think a lot of people history is helpful there very minimal amount but just this is where this came from is why it's relevant. It's really hard for people I think to blindly calculate without that sort of simple context. So just kind of made a very rudimentary still kind of scaffolding it. Coda it's already linked in that project row but I'll put it in that sub page there to super work in progress. Yeah I mean the idea is just there's these questions are going to be asked over and over and over again. There will be people coming from a more mathematical more physics a more neuroscience a more from different backgrounds. And so why pretend like that's not happening or reinvent the wheel every time somebody asks a question like just having a central resource where people can get a lot of value but also maybe ask a question. That's a little more they might not want to ask and seem like it's too simple or it's too whatever in the live stream. Okay thank you. Any other comments or thoughts on this otherwise we'll just continue on for the final minutes. Okay. Textbook enrichment. Yes I hope everyone continues to annotate figure out also things on their own and explore and like we're building something really powerful with annotation. So I hope that people can continue to be enriching with the structures that we're building. But yes, so much of what this group has been about has been about textbook enrichment and improvement. Robot modeling. Unless anyone has other comments I think learning from JF and staying in part two will help. And yeah, Jessica and then anyone else. Sorry I think I didn't raise my hand from yours. Yes. Well, any general comments that people want to provide on the textbook group? I think the live streams are super important for the lab and the whole space for maybe obvious reason the textbook group is equally important. These are like the two most important things that can add value to the space and the lab participants. Indeed glad that those who have made it this far see that and over the right time scales in the right way. We see more and more vistas to increase the accessibility and rigor of active inference. So I hope we can hold that frame. And focus our attention. To provide these functionalities. Because if it's stateable, it's doable. In a way. And if no one from the first cohort wants to be an active facilitator or steward for textbook group to some of these changes will be integrated. The more people who want to step in to steward. In our participatory context. Are going to be leverage points for so many more people who come through. So there's like multiple levels of affordances for those who see them. Especially at the end of this section. And it's been quite a few months. Any last comments? Okay, I'm going to stop the recording in three seconds unless somebody wants to say something. Okay.


Ian Nayra, Director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization. She's been generous enough to take time out of her schedule to speak to us. Dr. Nayra will speak for about 20 minutes and then we will go to questions and answers with you, our audience. You'll be able to join the discussion using the Q&A function on Zoom, which you should be able to see at the bottom of your screen. And please feel free to send in any questions you have throughout the session as they occur to you and we'll come to them as soon as Dr. Nayra has finished her presentation. And just a reminder that today's presentation and the Q&A are both on the record. Please feel free also to join the discussion on Twitter using the handle at IIEA. And we're also live streaming this afternoon, so you are very welcome if you're watching on YouTube. So it is now my pleasure and privilege to introduce Dr. Maria Nayra, who's the director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the WHO based in Geneva. Dr. Nayra is a medical doctor by training and she specialized in endocrinology and metabolic diseases at university in Paris. Amongst many distinctions, she's been awarded the Medaille de l'Ordre Nationale du Mérite by the government of France and she also received an extraordinary woman award by Her Majesty, Queen Laetitia of Spain. And in 2019, she was nominated among the top 100 policy influencers in health and climate change. So we are deeply privileged to have you with us today, Dr. Nayra. But before we hear from Dr. Nayra, I'd like to hand the floor to His Excellency Michael Gaffey, Director-General of Irish Aid to deliver some opening remarks. Thank you very much, Quiva, and good afternoon, everybody. It is a real pleasure for me to open this latest session of the IIEA Development Matters series, which is, as Quiva said, supported by Irish Aid. And it's particularly, I'm particularly pleased to be doing this as one of the first public events that I have taken on since taking on this role of Director-General of Irish Aid about just five weeks ago. Now, it has been a very busy five weeks and I just want to say that last week was the budget in Ireland and I'm very pleased that as part of the budget we received, there has been a 17% increase in the International Development Programme, the ODA of Ireland for 2023. So this helps us address the growing and significant and interlocking problems that we need to face as a development programme. And that's relevant very much to what we're here to discuss today, which is future proofing of the climate health nexus. This is unquestionably an issue of growing global importance and urgency. I think the links between health and climate change should be very obvious, but sometimes really do need to be reasserted. Climate change and environmental degradation threaten our ability to maintain good health. It's a very obvious, clear, simple statement, but one that does need to be underlined. And I think we're therefore really honoured to have someone as distinguished as Dr. Maria Nera with us here today to address that. It is clear that we need strong global health architecture and that it be equipped to deal with the effects of climate change. And the pillars of this architecture are multilateral health institutions with the WHO at its heart. And Ireland continues to be a strong supporter of the organisation. I spent the last five years as our ambassador in Geneva, so I am very well aware of the importance of the WHO, but also not just in the traditional standard health areas, but right across the areas which need to be addressed in order to achieve the sustainable development goals. We are very encouraged by the growing body of work that WHO is doing on the links between climate health, climate and health systems. And at COP26 last year, Ireland was proud to join the WHO-led Alliance for Transformative Action on Climate and Health, which aims to build climate resilient and sustainable health systems. And I was very happy to learn that our own national health service, the Health Service Executive, is currently working on its own climate strategy for our health systems. At the international level, Ireland is very active across the area of health and climate action, both in our diplomacy and through our international development programming. And we have committed to over 100 million per year to global health since 2020, focusing on equitable health system strengthening in low-income contexts. It's just the week before last that I was with Minister Kovni in New York, and he announced Ireland's new pledge to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria of 65 million for the next three years, and increase of 30% on our last pledge. This reflects our deep awareness of the importance of adopting a one-health approach, which highlights the centrality of climate-proofing for preventing future pandemics. The impact of climate change on human behavior and health was perhaps most clearly demonstrated during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, but it also had clear implications for the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, Ireland published its international climate finance roadmap, which sets out a plan for reaching the target set by our T-shirt, our Prime Minister, last year to provide at least 225 million in climate finance per year by 2025. And the budget last week started the process of increasing our climate finance quite significantly. In the roadmap, we maintain a focus on climate change adaptation and resilience as a priority for our funding. This includes climate adaptation in key sectors, such as health, nutrition and food systems. And we are really keen to learn more about how health systems, services and infrastructure can build resilience on the impacts of climate change while also positively contributing to climate action. It's a very, very rich and detailed area. And honestly, I don't think we could, if anyone more qualified or better than Dr. Marie Inera, to speak to us on it today. So Dr. Inera, thank you again for joining us. I'm going to hand you the floor and look forward to a really good, detailed discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Director-General, Ambassador. And thank you as well, the presenter. Thanks for the pressure you're putting in me as well, saying that I am a person for providing the good overview of this. I hope I will not disappoint you. Let me first of all say that I love what you put it on your slogan on sharing ideas and shaping policy. This is most of the time what we are trying to do. I think that today, as you rightly say, we have a very strong evidence about what climate change is doing to our heads. Of course, we still need more research. We still need to shape our interventions to make sure that we will put our money, our efforts, our energy where we will have as much impact as possible. But we cannot say, we will never be able to say we didn't do more on climate change because we didn't have enough evidence. We have very strong evidence.  And part of that negative, the harmful impact in our health will come from the fact that the causes of climate change are as well overlapping on a big proportion with the causes of air pollution. And let me start with one of those already negative, terrible figures that we need to put on the table at one point. The seven million premature deaths. That's something which is absolutely unacceptable, but we are accepting it every day. We have every year seven million premature deaths caused by exposure to air pollution. Means caused by the bad quality of the air we are breathing. And it's air that we must breathe. We cannot stop breathing. And we have to breathe in Dublin. We have to breathe in Madrid. We have to breathe in Namibia. And we have to breathe in Mexico City. So this actual, totally unacceptable fact of our air quality or lack of our air quality causing this damage to our health I think is the first barrier that we need to analyze. Why is it still there? Why we are not reacting at the level of ambition that the magnitude of the problem represent? Not only we are causing seven million deaths every year air pollution, but air pollution is making sure that our hospitals are full, that our hospitals are treating diseases that are representing as well chronic diseases that are costing a lot to our health system. So the health system is already investing a lot on coping with the consequences of inaction on climate change and air pollution. So when someone at the international level on the different negotiation and conference, when we use this argument that is very expensive to do mitigation of climate change, please make sure that you tell the economist of those who are preparing that document that they need to include the cost that the health systems are already paying and is, believe me, very, very high. We have several studies as well demonstrating that the fact that we need to treat chronic diseases, diseases that will require long-term hospitalization and that represent not only obviously a terrible human suffering, but in addition to that, our health system is already responding and paying for the climate change.  Of course, they will be treating more diseases of the so-called climate-sensitive diseases they are having more cases of dengue or more cases of malaria because the global warming will facilitate certain diseases that are already occurring, that there will be exacerbated. So my first point that I wanted to share with you and to hopefully provoke a little bit for the discussion later on is no excuses. I mean, we have the scientific evidence, as I say, we can always develop more. There is never enough on science, but we know that this is already occurring. There are not only the disease burden, but as well a terrible cost for society and a terrible cost for our economies. So that element needs to be considered and not accepted as an excuse when decisions are not taken. But let me now pass on something a little bit more positive. Let's look at the opportunities we have here. You know that the health professionals, the medical and health community forever has been talking about prevention and we have even prevention is better than cure. This is a fantastic sentence that even on your daily life, you can incorporate. But unfortunately, we do not incorporate it on our daily life when we plan on this global health architecture, because in fact, climate change adaptation on our own terminology, on the health professionals terminology means secondary prevention. So we invented that already many years ago and mitigation of climate change on our own terminology means primary prevention. So this is the positive part. Look at what will require to tackle the causes of climate change. It will require first and most importantly, changing the sources of energy we are using at the moment. I mean, we need to accelerate this transition to a healthy, renewable, clean source of energy we can't afford from a public health point of view. And now I'm exclusively talking about public health point of view. We can't afford to keep combusting fossil fuels. And we can't afford it, not because we are activists of the environment, we are eco-friendly people, we are lefties, very green peace friends or we are from a party that has a very environmental ecosystems agenda. We can't afford it because this is dramatically affecting our health. We need to stop combusting fossil fuels because not only those fossil fuels are contributing to the climate change, the global warming but they are contributing dramatically to this pollution of the air that we need and we need to breathe the 10,000 approximately liters of air that we need every day. Imagine that air that we need every day coming into our lungs, damaging already our respiratory system. We know the diseases that can cause from lung cancer to asthma. I think asthma is one of the most visible linkages now between air pollution and health of the people because people connected very well, the exposure to when the days are very polluted the asthmatic people will feel it that they will immediately feel at risk so they connect very well. But as I say, the polluted air we breathe not only will stay in our lungs in our respiratory system it will go to the bloodstream and from there it can reach any of our organs and now we are accumulating more and more evidence about the damage to our brain as well. So imagine that we are putting at risk our IQ which is the thing that will help us to survive as a society, as humans and because we are breathing and we are exposed to pollutants that are very damaging for our health. Let's go back to the positive. As I was saying, we have plenty of opportunities and we cannot miss any of them on our massive primary prevention strategy. Everybody's these days after the pandemic and with the different crisis we are facing in the middle of a horrible humanitarian situation conflict and lack of biodiversity everybody's talking about the crisis we are facing. Well, health professionals sometimes are very pragmatic we used to be very pragmatic and we can easily make a diagnosis and then make some prescriptions and our prescriptions will be the following. One, please accelerate the transition to clean, healthy, renewable sources of energy. That's fundamental for our health and not only will benefit our health it will decrease the cost of the health system therefore benefiting as well economically it will contribute as well to a more sustainable economy. $1 invested on a job generated by the fossil fuels will generate the renewable energy investment will generate four times more jobs than the dollar invested on the fossil fuels. So again, another argument of common sense that the health community can put forward and hopefully promote those fantastic opportunities. So first prescription transition to healthy sources of energy. Second prescription, accelerate a healthy urban planning our cities today they are celebrating the International Architectural Day and they have decided that the thing will be the signing for health. And it's very clear that the way we design our cities will have a positive or negative influence on our health depending of course what decisions we are taking and those decisions are fundamental because they will impact not only they will reduce their pollution if you have a healthy urban planning you will reduce injuries and accidents you will have buildings that are more and better and for energy efficiency you will be able to walk and therefore reduce your sedentary lifestyle and all the diseases that are associated with that and if we are smart enough on the way we plan our cities we will make sure that people will have access to healthy food and cheap food and then we can reduce the obesity isn't the fantastic plus we will contribute to mental health and reducing inequities in cities. That's one of the most fantastic challenges that we have in front of us but again we can use the funds to tackle the causes of climate change to mitigate climate change and this might result on healthy urban healthy urban and therefore our health will the health benefits the health outcomes will be enormous. Next prescription about sustainable food systems we need to change the way we produce food we consume food we manage the waste of the food we are generating we are producing enough food for everyone but unfortunately one third of the food we produce is finishing into waste we need to reshape as well of consuming and again that's something positive it's something that we can use the health argument to further motivate action on climate change. So if you look at the agenda of climate change and you look at one by one to all the interventions and you take a manual of public health you can confront to the two and you will realize that they overlap. All of the interventions promoted under climate change mitigation and adaptation are public health pure and pure and basic interventions because we want to breathe better air we want to have clean water we want to have food and now with the natural disasters we are facing with the destruction of the ecosystems that are breaking as well this barrier between human health and animal health and therefore destroying this concept of one health which again is something so public health and so primary prevention approach that we need to retrieve it again. And as I say the benefits for our population will be so good that we can use that to further motivate and anytime you put in place an intervention you can quantify the benefits for that. So this is the positive agenda and the prescriptions. Another prescription please make sure you involve mayors. Mayors are fundamental in implementing our health agenda because those are the ones that needs to look at the sustainable transport system for the citizens in the cities. They are the ones that can influence the way the buildings are organized and whether there is efficiency or not in our use of energy. They will look at whether we create some climate refuse in our cities which looks that it will be very much needed. I was in London this summer when the temperature reached at 41 and it was clearly the big cities in Europe we are not prepared to cope with the heat waves and well I'm sure we need to start to think about that as well. Another prescription and then we can discuss is how the health system can lead by example. And Director General mentioned it already that last year at COP26 one of the health commitments was and I'm very happy about that was on reducing our own carbon footprint. Obviously for middle and high income countries because low income countries they are not only not generating any carbon footprint they need to gain access to the electricity for uses as a healthcare facility. So leading by example, decarbonizing our own health system and this is very rewarding that the health professionals we are joining with a lot of entusiasmen I'm sure that the voices of those health professionals can help us to further motivate others and engage using the health argument for more climate action is something that we are very, very much promoting. I think we have all of those opportunities we need as well to use more the positive language. These days people is terrified by the bad news that we are hearing all the time and that generates sometimes a kind of paralysis or this apocalypse is now approach that we are using might generate a paralysis by the population while if we put it in positive if you reduce your carbon footprint if you take a bicycle instead of your car if you take a bus instead of your private car if you recycle, if you switch off the light if you put pressure on your politicians you can generate enormous health benefits. For me, the mantra here is influence, influence, influence and I'm not talking about the influencers on social media I'm talking about influencing ministers of energy influencing ministers of economy influencing ministers of environment influencing layers, influencing the big responsible for academic institutions government institutions, citizens all the associations we can put in place and then create this very powerful network on a positive movement for using health arguments for climate action. Another example mentioned it before the support that has been given to the global fund to tackle malaria TV and HIV AIDS. Well, if the global fund will put solar panels for their refrigerators when they distribute their vaccines, for instance what we are saying is that don't put a solar panel that will cover only the needs of electricity for your refrigerator, the refrigerator of Gabby or the refrigerator of the global fund. Please upgrade the panels on an initiative that WHO is putting in place now upgrade those panels and then you will have electricity for the whole healthcare facility. That's a way as well to be pragmatic action oriented jumping on opportunities reducing the cost and still obtaining a lot of health advantages. I think I will stop here. I can talk about this for ages but definitely I hope to see you all at COP 27 putting pressure where you can do it and making sure that the health argument will be very strongly positioned because it's the common sense one and it's the one that will generate finally more action and more ambition on this climate change agenda. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Maria, thank you so much for that excellent input. I think it's quite staggering that seven million people per annum die as a result of air pollution. I think that figure alone should make us all sit up pay attention and take greater action. And I think also it's clear from your input that health and bringing to light making people more aware of the impact on our health everywhere across the world already of climate change is not just hugely damaging to us as individuals and to our societies but it's hugely costly. So I think that's very important. So please by all means everybody who is listening please put your questions into the Q&A. I'm going to come to a couple of questions now, Dr. Neira. So maybe the first question I will ask you comes from Leanne Digny, who's a researcher at the IEA. And Leanne says that the UN General Assembly recently passed a resolution recognizing the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment as a human right. And the question is what meaningful actions should member states take as a priority to ensure that this resolution will serve as a catalyst for systemic and transformative change. And if I could add to that, Dr. Neira, I wonder if you could in your answer comment on the different proportionate responsibility of governments such as the government of Ireland, governments in the European Union and governments of low income countries. So if the question is what are the meaningful actions that member states should take as a priority, then if you could comment a little bit about we've got very different resource environments in different parts of the world, I think would be helpful for the audience to hear and understand your perspective on what those priority investments should be. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And let me start by this second part of your question about differentiated responsibilities. You know that one of the focus of the COP 27 this year will be the so-called loss and damage. It was very interesting because last week I participated in one meeting where they were discussing about loss and damage. And of course they are looking at the loss of land or the loss of resources, the damage on the ecosystems and which is already a huge agenda and hope countries need to commit to support those who have contributed the less to the climate change now to COP with the loss and damage. And just to put yet another strong piece there is that obviously the loss and damage in terms of health is not considered. I mean, the agenda is already in terms of loss and damage so big that when I ask it, then are you considering health? They say, no, unfortunately, no, because there is not even yet a full commitment by countries on how to support. As you know, Denmark has announced recently, I think it was Denmark to a strong contribution to that in discussing seriously about the differentiated responsibilities. But I don't think we need to keep and in many countries like Fiji who are extremely vulnerable to climate change these days and their voices are always very strong. And they always say, we don't want to be evicted only, we don't want you to be the ones receiving it. We are raising our voice because what you are doing is nonsense but we will put ourselves as well some solutions. And so I think developing countries, of course they need to start to move into renewable sources of energy. I think they need to learn from our mistakes and not only, of course they need to make sure that they help mobilize those resources that the rich countries, the developed countries need to share with them or put in place new technologies but not committing the same mistakes, opening coal mining or opening. Now, again, why we don't have solar panels in the whole continent in Africa, for instance, we need to invest on solutions where the countries not only they receive support from something to repair something that they didn't do but as well they are equipped with the technology that will respond to the challenges we have today. So differentiated responsibility, if you look at health, it's terrible because you see that the countries that are contributing the most are the countries that will be less affected in terms of health and the countries that contribute in the less, like in Africa, there will be the countries most affected in terms of health consequences as well. So it's quite dramatic but this will not exclude that the developing countries they need to put in place lessons learned and not going to our path of development because it was wrong, our path of development. Now, in terms of the resolution of healthy environments, this is beautiful that finally this resolution was approved and recognized as a human right. At the same time, I think as a society, we need to ask ourselves how can it be possible that we need that resolution to recognize that I have the right to breathe clean air or have a clean water, but this is where we are. So this resolution was very important and I know that the commission is now very much committed to move this agenda. We are joining forces and hopefully this will result on legislation as well, why not? And taking countries to the court or this is happening as well. There are groups that are taking their own countries to court because they are not taking actions to protect their own citizens. I think the case of Ella Kisidebra, I think is a very important one that will change legislation on this little girl who passed away with horrible asthma, but anytime she was cured at the hospital, she was sent back home where she was exposed to those horribly high levels of pollution in London. So I think more and more legislation will play a role as well. So it's not just a recognition of a human right, but using that resolution, hopefully action will come as well and legislation might be one of those actions that we would put in place. Excellent, thank you so much, Dr. Nera. And it's shocking to hear that story of that little girl who ultimately tragically lost her life as a result of air pollution. And I think you're absolutely correct that legislation measures are increasingly being used by citizens who are considering that their governments are not taking climate change sufficiently seriously. I'm going to come to a question from Kirsten Hadfield and Kirsten is an assistant professor in global health at Trinity College Dublin. And Kirsten says that here in Ireland, there's a lot of reticence from the public and from the government to reducing road space for cars and for reallocating it to pedestrians and cyclists in public transport. And it is true that even minor changes to our transport systems are fought very hard. So we feel we're very behind, therefore, in reducing our transit emissions and other emissions. And Kirsten's question is, do you have any suggestions for how we as citizens can try to push these changes forward with the goal of promoting health and reducing climate impacts? Thank you. Thank you, and Kristian, I fully agree with you. There are a lot of reluctance, unfortunately, in many places, even the citizens, sometimes they have reluctant to have solar panels, sometimes they have reluctant to have wind turbines, sometimes they are reluctant to reduce road space, and sometimes they are reluctant to stop smoking. Or even to use the safety belt for road safety purposes. But I think it's up to us, public health authorities and governments to have a look at the public health. I mean, the public health means looking at the collectivity and then protecting the rights of individuals, but at the same time looking at how public health can be the outcome of this type of intervention. What we know is that we have created what we call the Breathe Life Campaign. We are doing this with UNEP and the Climate and Cleaner Coalition and other organizations now. And the idea is exactly that. This is great a platform where experiences about changing cities and putting in place some interventions like promoting a very efficient, sustainable transport system, collecting all of those samples and experiences. How can this be useful for other cities? And I will, Christian, invite you to have a look at this Breathe Life catalog and initiatives because this is the way where mayors are exchanging experiences and ideas and of course frustrations as well. In some cases and some cities in France, for instance, the mayors have a lot of opposition by the citizens because they say, well, if you reduce space, you will then reduce maybe the shops will reduce their income and they will not be of interest of citizens. So I think we need to obviously be very good on the narrative on explaining to citizens what will be the advantages for health, for economic purposes and as well using the samples of other cities where at the beginning the citizens were very much opposed but then now they don't want to go back. And this is an experience that we have everywhere. Even if at the beginning it was a bigger position and the mayor insisted and then they went ahead. At the beginning it was resistance but then the citizens never wanted to go back. When you think that even in Rome, the Coliseum, around the Coliseum, it was until few years ago a place where cars could go. It was such a dense traffic there, the Coliseum, imagine our Patrimon. So yes, we need to move. So tell your citizens to look at other experiences, have a good argument about how health will be beneficial and be conscious as well that sometimes the economic arguments needs to be considered as well and explain properly to the citizens because they cannot buy only the environmental or health arguments if they think that there will be suffering on their economies because that's the daily maybe urgency for many of them is that. Just a last example, in Mexico City, which is very, very polluted, the mayor decided to reduce pollution and then using the health arguments so we were very much behind but unfortunately the decision that was taking was to ban all the cars that were more than, I don't know, five or six years old. You know, if you don't have a good solution in terms of sustainable transport, what you are doing is you are penalizing the vulnerable part of your population because the rich people will never have a car which is old. I mean, it's the modest people, the people with low economy, the ones that will have very old car, very old pollutant car. So you need to have a look as well at maybe subsidies, maybe a good sustainable transport. You need to have a holistic approach to all of those measures. You cannot have it in vertical because maybe you fix something and you create an inequity or a problem somewhere else. Excellent, thank you very much. And I think you're right. I think we can all recognize, even from our own experience here in Ireland, how people might resist a positive behavioral change but once it's embedded, then not only welcome us but sometimes congratulate ourselves loudly for having been one of the first introducers such as the plastic bike tax and the city bikes of course, which are now hugely popular here. But maybe if I just go to another issue which comes in from Leanne Digny again, researcher at the IIEA. And this is sometimes used in discourse when we're talking about changing behavior and there's a sort of a what about response. So Leanne's question is around the impact of countries such as China and India. So of course, air pollution is a huge problem of public health, particularly for lower income countries. And countries such as China and India and we could probably add a few more are currently economically dependent on pollution heavy manufacturing industries. And these governments therefore have few incentives to abate air pollution. The question is what can the international community do to address this? But if I could also add in a secondary question which is how can we short circuit the argument that China and India are much bigger problems and therefore we don't need to change, they do. That's the question because I think at the cops, this is an argument that has been used very often unfortunately the fact that, well, those are the most polluters. If you are the US and China and India, the rest of us we can relax because we are small contributors. Well, again, we need to look at the individuals. So independently where you are, you need to look at how this is affecting my lands, my health. And then if we use that, there is never enough level of ambition to go for more. Keeping in mind that we need to protect the economy but this is feasible. Look at the Scandinavians. The Scandinavians are among the most environmentally friendly for their own people, maybe. But for their own people, and they are a very important economy. So it's feasible. Now, India and China is very interesting because definitely India is unfortunately one of the country where the respect for double-edged quality guidelines is unfortunately going beyond our standards and many, many times. And the reasons for that pollution are many. But ironically, at the end of Glasgow COP26 India refused on accepting some of the agreements that the COP26 wanted to take. And the day after the COP, business was closed in New Delhi. Schools were closed. All the outside construction and buildings were closed because the levels of pollution were such that it was impossible to see. So it was impossible to work outside and impossible to take children to school. And that has an economic cost. And what has an economic cost in China is that they realize that international organizations or industries or big multinationals, they don't want to live there. I mean, they are concerned about the health of their families and it's becoming a very challenging duty station for many professionals. And they realize that there are many things related to that pollution that is bad for their economy as well. So interestingly in China, although there are still among the biggest polluters, no doubt, but the trend is starting to get stable or probably going down. So they realize that this is not good for business at all. So they are taking some measures and we hope that now that the energy crisis will not revert to those measures, but the trend is going there. In India, it's more challenging because the sources of pollution are many and they might take in some states, I mean, the structure of the whole country as well that the bureaucracy might create some difficulties, but definitely this is something that sooner or later India will wake up. So this association of if you want to develop, you need to pollute is a nonsense because you can learn from those who polluted to be developed and then avoid the wrong decisions and use the new technology and those resources that will be allocated for intelligent and unhealthy solutions instead of repeating the same mistakes on a very polluting development that will give you then a level of business very low because if your rivers are polluted in India or in China, you might make some business in few months, but in few years you will be out of business. Thanks very much, Dr. Nair. I think that's really interesting and also encouraging and it's very stark when you say that by direct comparison with the reluctance of a government maybe to give concessions around climate emissions, then if you have direct evidence that actually their economy as well as their people are suffering as a result of poor air quality, maybe that might force a change. There's a question here again in the whole area of innovative solutions and thinking outside the box. Colin O'Hare has a question. He was inspired by your example of the solar panels, not just for vaccine installations, but for the wider health system. And he says that the possibilities of thinking outside the box could be far reaching. So Ireland, for example, is supporting a health perspective in work by the EU on building design. And his question is, are there any other examples where health or climate considerations need to feature in broader actions? Well, interesting question. Definitely we are thinking and every day to make sure that we are not missing any of those. But when you look at the emergency operations, okay, and you look at the humanitarian community, which is huge at large. I mean, every government will have a humanitarian branch and international support for emergency situations. We are still sending diesel or through our emergency operations to operate the diesel generators in many healthcare facilities. So this is already a kind of shocking or until very recently in our emergency operations, we were still sending for construction purposes asbestos for pipes and things like that. But let's focus on the opportunities. Yes, I see one which is this on not sending diesel for diesel generators at the healthcare facilities. Please, it's extremely costly to transport. Second is clearly not environmentally friendly. And third, we have a much better solution, which is having solar panel at that facility. And electrifying our healthcare facilities with solar panel is one of our key projects. And we want to put an effort on that and create some coherence and common sense approach is a network of institutions that are now with the best of the intention sending one refrigerator with one solar panel because the purpose is to keep my vaccine for which I have the responsibility. That cannot be. The other one in terms of opportunities and this is huge as well is that any international organization that is building healthcare facilities and there are many that they build healthcare facilities or hospitals, please don't call it healthcare facility if you don't provide sanitation and water and electricity services. Call it something else. Call it a building or call it a piece of brick as you wish. But I mean, it's the minimum if you open something which is called healthcare facility, please make sure as a basic, basic recommendation and again an opportunity that the provision for hygiene, sanitation and come on electricity are there. And at least the water and sanitation, I don't even, I mean, it will be a dream to have electricity, but come on. I mean, we are in the, in the, on a pandemic where the main recommendation was wash your hands for almost half of the population around the world washing your hands is a challenge. You don't have soap in the healthcare facilities in Africa, you don't have water and how do you want to provide. So please, when you build facilities, basic standards, you can reduce maybe the size but make sure that there is water and sanitation or other ways don't call it healthcare facility. Thank you, Dr. Neda. And I know from your own work that there's a shocking number and percentage of healthcare facilities globally that don't meet those global standards. I think if I'm right, about 50% of healthcare facilities don't have either hand washing facilities in the bathrooms or adequate sanitation stations within the hospital operating infrastructure itself. So I think if we're asking you what the priorities are, they're becoming very clear. And this may well be our last question but we do have a question here around, oh sorry, I've got a question here around biomass fuels and I've got one other question on priorities. So maybe we'll just take these two. So question from Emily Binshee at the IIEA who says that today, the investing in health for all high level event organized by the WHO and the European Investment Bank is taking place. What outcomes do you hope to see from that event? And then the second question, and I leave you with both of these, is from Keelan O'Sullivan at the IIEA also who says that approximately 2.4 billion people depend on biomass fuels as their main source of energy for cooking. So what practical changes can be made to move away from burning biomass fuels in low income countries? Fascinating questions. Thank you very much. Regarding the investment case, very simple. If you look at them, my dream, it doesn't mean that it's this cause at the moment on the investment case but my dream will be 25% of the global burden of diseases is linked to modifiable environmental risk factors. So one quarter of the whole mortality and morbidity globally is linked to environmental risk factors that you can modify. As we were saying, access to safe water, sanitation, occupational health standards, chemicals that we use, climate change and air pollution. So this is the 25%. It can be reduced every year very easily. So those factors can be modifiable. It's not something that is happening and there is nothing you can do about it. No, you can modify it. So when you look at the investment that we are doing on Keel, 97% of the resources are going for care and 3% is going to prevention. So please, that will be my call and my dream about this investment increase a little bit. I'm not saying to 25%, which will be kind of balance because I don't want to reduce investment on care but maybe if we increase the investment on prevention, that investment might come as well from the Ministry of Energy or the Ministry of Environment or the Ministry of Economy or the Ministry of Urban Planning because all of those interventions will help us with this agenda. But at least please increase the investment on environmental health because now we are less than 1% and this is, if you allow me to say, ridiculous. Regarding the biomass fuels, again, another thing that is absolutely unacceptable, almost half of the world population is cooking like in the Stone Age. So not like in the last century. No, the Stone Age.  And then you put girls to do that for hours and then they need to first collect it, then they need to cook and then they need to inhale it. The moms, the girls and the babies in the back of those moms. If somebody thinks that this is a good society, if somebody thinks that this is a good investment, it's not. But in addition to that, from a health point of view, this is almost criminal. So we need to accelerate access to clean household fuels for heating, lightening and cooking. And this is an agenda very, very much neglected, but we are doing our best, accelerating that and we have created a high level panel for action convening Ministers of Health and Ministers of Energy. And on the 7th of October, so this week we are having the second meeting of those energy ministers and health ministers looking at whether we can accelerate and convince Ministers of Energy of the importance of discussing with Ministers of Health on healthcare facilities access to electricity and household clean fuels at household level. Excellent. Thank you very much. We're working in the sector that indoor air pollution is a huge driver of illness and ill health in many of the countries that we work in. So thank you for that. And I think you're absolutely right to link it also to gender inequality and the fact that it's women and girls that are leaning over the fire, breathing in the particulate matter with sometimes a baby in the wild. And I think it's a great opportunity to have this kind of knowledge in the long term. Dr. Nera, we're drawing very close to the end of this session. Is there any final message that you would like to give to your audience this afternoon? Just to say that thank you very much for the opportunity, the privilege and of course please keep with passion interest, don't give up. We can change this and I think the health will be used health as a strong motivation. Thank you Dr. Nera. I think that's an excellent message and especially as we approach COP 27 it gives a bit of a freshness maybe to some of the discourse. So I'd like to thank you very, very warmly for giving your time to us this afternoon for giving us such a positive outlook as well on what are all of the solutions that in fact the solutions are very much in our hands and it is a matter of us taking action and doing that with a greater degree of urgency than we have done here before. So thank you.


Good morning everyone. It is my great pleasure to welcome you all to the debate competition organized by the PJ department, School of English and Political Studies to observe the Vigilance Awareness Week 2022 and initiative by the Central Vigilance Commission whom we would also like to thank for supporting this event. The goal of our debate is to give a platform to this young minds to engage in lively debate. Before I announce the guidelines for the debate I would like to introduce our guest for the event. First we have Sri Sashiva Panglano, IRS Additional Commissioner, CGSD Dimapur Commissionerate. Our next guest is Sri Thejaselu Yome, IRS Deputy Commissioner, CGSD Dimapur Commissionerate. Very good morning everyone. Respected guest, Mr. Moderator, the panel of judges, my co-debaters and the audience. I am here to propose the motion which asserts that corruption is the root cause for India's economic decline. So what is corruption? Transparency, international stats that corruption is abuse of interested power for private fund. Corruption, weakens democracy, hampers economic development, further intensify inequality, poverty, social division and economic crisis. So in the 2021 report of the transparency international rank, India has 85 among 180 countries in the corruption perception index report. So Sri Rajiv Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India, has once famously said that out of every rupee sent by the government over development, 85 Pesas are pocketed by middlemen and only 15 Pesas are actually spent for the purpose for which the amount was meant to be spent. So what does this imply? This means that if there had been no corruption, instead of one school existing now, there might have perhaps been six to seven schools. Instead of one hospital, there might have been six to seven hospitals and highways and so on. So it means that the quality of life might perhaps have been six to seven times better. So in support of my statement, I would like to talk about the tax evasion in India. Every year, a significant portion of population resorts to tax evasion. This leads to a massive loss of revenue for the government. Though the state of the tax justice 2020 report states that India showed a loss of $10.3 billion in tax due to global tax abuse. So the amount that has been gone wrong can be used in paying salaries of four crores to need three lakhs and 656 nurses annually. So these are the reasons are the main purpose and the main reasons of misuse of money and most probably the black money and irresponsible citizens leading to the India's economic decline and the main reason being corruption. So in the times of India, the capital expenditure during April to December 2020 stood at 3.17 lakh crore, 24% more higher than the total expenditure estimated. So this indicates that there is corruption in the management of money which hampers the growth of Indian economy. So my follow-up opponents may say that it is because of various incenses like malnutrition, no education or illiterature that is leading to the decline of Indian economy. But my statement here is that if the corrupted money is used to cover all this expenditure of malnutrition, no education, illiteracy, everything, this problem will not arise. So the opponents may give various reasons for the decline of Indian economy, but I say that corruption is the root cause of the decline of India's economy. Thank you. Respected judges, the moderator, intellectuals and everyone present here. A very good morning to you all and also to my co-debaters. Let me directly start and come to my point. How proud do you feel when you hear about India as a nation? Which is like rich in diversity. We have rich culture, traditions and heritage and talent. Yes, of course we have many diversity. There are enough reasons to feel proud about it. After everything about India is so big and has such a rich base, beat land mass population, the army and around like 1,600 languages in India itself. The highest crime rates, but India as it is the ranking top in corruption, which is the root cause of Indian economy degradation. Corruption is the main cause that is leading to the Indian economy degradation. Let me give greetings to each one of you. We are here today debating on the topic corruption, the root cause of Indian economy decline and it is definitely not the only root cause of Indian economy decline. Well, we are talking about corruption, but who is going to talk about the unemployment rises? What about the worsening US-China trade relations that is affecting Indian economy? It's such a red. Coming to the fact that we have all went through demonetization, the one-time cash curtailing exercise of the government that have a telling impact on Indian growth. Demonetization is not a short-time impact on economy as it is affecting India even now. As we are all aware that demonetization hit the farmers and the BPL the most. Their crop prices crushed during the year and exaggerated and already existing farm distress scenario. With no cash in hand, farmers sold farm profits at distressed sales. Within two weeks of the incident, 15 farmers reportedly committed suicide. When farmers are affected, our agricultural products is affected and when agriculture is affected, our GDP decreases. That's affecting our economy. See? No corruption being mentioned. Demonetization eventually leads to consumer demand slump, which slowed the rural economy and of all things hurt the Indian GDP as it slowed down in the real estate and construction sector have had the worst impact of all. Now coming to investment, investment level have bottomed out in the last two years at FII, foreign institutional investors marked an exit from the Indian stock market. It is said that 15,000 crore have been redrawn from Indian market in 2018 to 2019. So how can we only focus on corruption? Because Indian economy is flooded in many aspects. Are we forgetting about our overpopulated country in day's reddit second for being overpopulated? Just to remind you all. So when our country is overpopulated, the average production becomes way too less for everyone. A respected director, that's a college, faculty, participants, students, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the office of the commissioner, central GST, we are happy to have been given the opportunity to conduct this program here. I stand here just to say two things. One, I will just briefly introduce who we are as a department and secondly I'll give you a broad idea why we are doing this. What is this event a part of as a bigger picture in the whole country? You know Benjamin Franklin once said that nothing in the world is certain except for two things, death and taxes. Right? So today you're in a program being conducted by tax men yet many of us in Nagaland we have this misconception that Nagas don't pay tax, at least to the government. So yes, Nagas don't pay income tax. That is also partially true only. When a Naga working in Nagaland, a tribal in a tribal area, you don't have to pay tax, but a tribal working in a non-tribal area, tribal working in Calcutta, I pay income tax, right? So even the statement that Nagas don't have to pay income tax, that itself is partially true. But the bigger picture, there are many other taxes which people sitting in this room, everyone in Nagaland is paying and yet we are of the concept that Nagas don't pay tax, right? So what kind of taxes am I talking about? GST, customs, these are what you call indirect taxes. Why indirect? Because the tax is collected indirectly from the person who finally pays them, right? So I'll give you very basic two, three examples to explain what kind of taxes these are, right? Let's start with customs, you know. In Nagaland all of us are, we love anything Korean, right? So let's take the example of your favorite kimchi noodles, a packet of Korean noodles, right? So in the market when you buy it, you buy it for 100 bucks or 150, whatever the cost is, right? But the person who buys it from Korea in bulk, he has to pay some, a tax called customs duty. Customs duty is basically something that any goods coming into India from a foreign country, you have to suffer that tax. So the person who buys those Korean noodles in bulk pays an import duty for those noodles and then at the shop level, when you're buying that at the MRP, that customs duty is already adjusted for, right? So you and me, when you're buying that packet of noodles indirectly, you are paying customs duty, right? So we are paying customs tax. Let's take a look at GST, you know. Let's say you take your friends out for a treat to a restaurant, you went to KFC and you ate whatever burgers, chicken. So next time you do that, take a look at the bill. So you'll have the price of the items that you ate, burger, chicken, Pepsi, whatever, but below that you will find something called CGST as GST, right? So that portion is over and above the cost of the items that you have bought from the restaurant. And why you're paying this is because you enjoyed the service that environment inside a restaurant for which 5% GST is being deducted, right? So you and me, each time you do that, we are also paying GST without knowing that you're paying GST, right? Just another example, let's say you're buying a mobile phone also. The MRP says 5,000 rupees. Next time take a look at the breakup properly. The actual cost of the mobile will be something like 4,200, 300 and there'll be an 18% GST which is taxed on mobile phones. So my point basically is without knowing all of us are paying taxes here in Nagaland, yet we think Nagas don't pay taxes, right? So we are from that department, the indirect taxes, the central board of indirect taxes and customs, CBIC, under which the GST department comes in. And in all states in the country, including Nagaland, we have two authorities. We have the central GST and the state GST which run side by side and we implement the GST laws across the country for GST, right? For Nagaland here. So that is an introduction to who we are. As an introduction, they have mentioned the Central Vigilance Commission. Yes, that is the overall commission that is conducting this Vigilance Awareness Week. But we are from the central GST office also observing this Vigilance Awareness Week, right? The second point, coming to this Vigilance Awareness Week. This is observed throughout India in all central government offices as well as public sector units and banks. And this is done coinciding with the birthday of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, who is known as the Iron Man of India, because he was such a persuasive person, you know. So his birthday falls on 31st October. So generally the week that is coinciding with 31st October every year, we observe this week and this year's theme is corruption-free India for a developed nation. So thank you that Tetsuo College has given us this platform. Thank you to the participants. A round of applause to them once again, because as already mentioned by some of the speakers, the topic itself is something slightly skewed in favor. You know, it's easy for all of us to agree. And yet to come up with points against, that was difficult, but I think all of you have done well. One of the speakers mentioned the fact that how much Rajiv Gandhi and, you know, 1 rupee, how much paisa trickles down. I'll tell you from the other side, you know, how much is the tax department contributing to that 1 rupee, right? So from 1 rupee, this is what our honorable union finance minister has mentioned in a budget speech this year. Almost 60 paisa of that 1 rupee is contributed from the tax department, right? Around 35 paisa is from borrowings. And other five paisa comes from this investment and other kinds of ways to raise. So the tax department plays a very important role in building the economy, because on one hand you have people who are spending the money for development, but we are on the other hand gathering the money so that development and spending can happen, right? Once again, thank you to the director. You know, as he mentioned, we have known each other for some time, but this was a good opportunity to catch up. I call him on the phone and I asked him whether we can have this event. And he graciously has given us this opportunity. Thank you also to Dr. Rosy Tep, who was the contact point for the college and our officers have been keeping in touch with her, making the preliminary requirements for this program. Just to end, you know, we agree that corruption remains one of the main factors why there is slowness in our economic, social, political development, right? At the same time, just my concluding remarks would be what would be yours and my response to this kind of a program, you know. It is not only the government alone which has to take action when it comes to corruption, you know, all stakeholders, the private sector, the citizens at large, you know. So this morning I was just reading something on social media. Most of my news I get from social media. So I read the story and somehow that spoke to me and I'd like to share this with you regarding what our response to corruption could be, you know. It comes down to one word, you know, integrity. And this is a story about two Japanese men who were standing at a road crossing, you know. So one of the men, they were standing there waiting for the light to turn green so that they can cross the road. So the other man says, I don't see any car on the left side. I don't see any car coming from the right side, right? It says don't walk. There is no car coming. Why don't we just walk, right? And the response of the other man is that no, we will not walk. What if a child sees us doing this, right? So basically integrity is about doing the right thing when nobody else is looking at you. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I hope our session has been a very productive session today. And it's good to see all of you present, especially the students present today. This, at this time, I want to thank our, our, sir. And also I want to thank our officials coming from the CGST Dimapur Commissioner. I thank Shri Sashi Wapan Lanu, IRS additional commissioner CGST Dimapur Commissioner. And also Shri Tejasel Hu Yomei IRS, IRS, the beauty commissioner CGST Dimapur Commissioner. Thank you so much. And also thank you so much to the official team from the CGST Dimapur for giving the student this platform to express themselves. And at the same time giving them a big platform where they can see, where they are learning, where they see that they can have a lot of critical thinking. And at the same time delivering or addressing their argument in place. And I would also thank the students here who have participated giving, with your critical thinking, your argument. But at the end of the day, we all understand, we all know that you are sharing your own viewpoint. And I'm sure there is no hard feelings among the students as well as you share your, your viewpoint on this. This, this debate has been specially organized for the PG level student this time. And we hope in the coming future we will have a lot of, as our director has already mentioned, we want, we want to have a lot of debate competition because we feel that this is fruitful, this is necessary for the students to understand how to present their ideas to the audience.